“Apéritif” S01E01 Hannibal Review

There have been many adaptations of Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, the first novel in his Hannibal Lector series.  Clarice Starling was running around in pigtails at this time and it was Will Graham, special investigator for the FBI, that we followed in that story.  In the novel, Lector has been in prison for three years, and Will Graham is retired, recovering from being sliced open by Lector when he caught him.  This adaptation isn’t really an adaptation at all, it’s a prequel, which has left the creators with the feeling that they can pretty much do what they want.  In this story, Will Graham apparently has Aspergers – although Will is a bit of an oddity considering his history it’s a bit of a leap to autism – and the most unusual change is that psychiatrist Dr Alan Bloom and journalist Freddy Lounds have both undergone reconstructive genital surgery and become women.  Presumably this is a) to provide a love interest for Graham (now Alana Bloom) and b) so the actress who plays Bloom doesn’t get lonely in the changing rooms (Lounds).

At least with all these changes you can’t be sure whether or not they are going to reinvent the wheel with this one, which at least adds some mystery for those that have been Thomas Harris fans or Lector movie-goers for some time now.  Apart from perhaps recognising a few names and knowing the overall destiny of everyone involved, you don’t know how each episode is going to go, or if indeed they will end up as you thought they would.  It makes a nice change, the only worry is whether they have enough content to make it last.  Surely Hannibal is going to get caught eventually, will it be after one series or will it be five years down the line after the whole run?  Who knows.

In this first episode, Will has been called in by head of Behavioural Sciences Jack Crawford, as he needs Graham’s unique insight to deal with his latest case.  Young girls are disappearing all over Minneapolis, with no corpses turning up to offer some clue as to what happened to them.  Luckily, as soon as Will is on the case a body turns up, with wounds that inspire the press to dub the killer the ‘Minnesota Shrike’, after the butcher bird that impales the bodies of it’s prey on thorns to make it easier to tear off chunks – I can see where this is going.

Eventually, Crawford ropes in Lector to do a profile on the Shrike, though I get the feeling it’s more likely a ruse to get him in the same room as Graham, whom Crawford has an unusual fascination with.  I suspect most of this show will be a battle of minds between the cannibal and the autistic, with Lector gently pushing and pushing the reluctant Graham, which will not please him: ‘Please don’t psycho analyse me, you won’t like me when I’m psycho analysed.’

I’m very impressed with Hugh Dancy who plays Will.  He manages to play him as a fully rounded human being, not just a walking disorder.  He also gets him to be likable despite some very realistic flaws, something that is sometimes sadly missing in other autistic characters, who are usually portrayed as innocent, emotionless automatons (my one complaint about Community is that Abed is too perfect, too polite and too well understood by his peers).  This is let down by some of the very forceful dialogue about the condition, not so much in the wording but the timing.  The first 15 minutes seems to be a race to educate the world about what Aspergers is really about.  Someone on the writing staff has a point to make, and albeit a very valid point, has forgotten they have an entire series to get this across.  The line ‘It’s less to do with a personality disorder than an active imagination’ is a very important one, as is the point about lecturing not listening to students and the eye contact, just slow it down.

I’m sure everyone is going to rave about this Lector, he’s certainly an improvement on the hammy Anthony Hopkins, but I’m not sure yet.  He definitely has a presence, but a lot of this will be our prior knowledge informing the performance rather than Mads Mikkelsen himself.  Though Lecter has always been a cold fish, someone you find difficult to like as the mask never falls, so I can’t fault Mikkelsen’s capability here.  Let’s hope we get to see the mask fall soon though.

I’m not a massive fan of the editing and the dream sequences, but mostly because I like to be comfortable sat on my sofa watching telly and I’m never keen on scratchy chords and jumpcuts and the like.  The set design is amazing for Hannibal’s office, though pretty unbelievable (would he need an office so big I could fit both storeys of my house in it?), but it’s the shots of food that really gets your mouth watering, literally.  Which is disturbing when you think about what could be in it.

I think this is an interesting twist on an old and already overexposed story.  Whether or not it justifies a 13 episode run remains to be seen.

7/10