10 Reasons Hannibal Was The Best Show On TV

10. The Aesthetics

More than anything, Hannibal is a deeply visual experience. Not content with looking simply beautiful, Hannibal takes that beauty to an emblematic level, dousing every frame in an abstract rhetoric. The show has a colour palette unrivalled in the history of television, an iridescence all its own, one in which hues and tones are used to both settle and disturb, with blood-red in particular taking on an extra, symbolic significance.

Even simple establishing shots of exterior buildings (FBI headquarters, characters’ houses etc.) have their own kind of splendour, with solid lines forming boundaries between the nature outside and the sterility of the offices and work-rooms inside. Above, over-head, shifting skies cyclone to signify changes in time, mood and atmosphere. 

The bourgeois character of Dr Hannibal Lecter is mirrored in the set design, which indulges in sleek, modern spaces (Hannibal’s infamous kitchen-come-laboratory) as well as ones of antiquity and grandeur (Hannibal’s therapy office), creating the perfect dichotomy for this 21st century aesthete to exist in. Everything about the show’s aesthetic is thought through, and every texture counts. It’s not hyperbole to say that this is the finest looking TV show ever made.