10 Horror TV Shows That Wasted Incredible Premises

Following the stupendous second season of NBC's Hannibal - capped off by one of the most shocking cliffhanger season finales in television history - it appeared that the show was in the process of hitting its stride in the most impressive of fashions.

Despite the first season garnering a positive critical reception, the rave reviews from audiences didn't start flooding in until the considerably faster paced second installment, which concludes with the fates of essentially every main character left up in the air in a breathless final sequence.

This makes the failures of the third season that much more egregious. Gone were the complex, twisting story threads and gripping narrative, to be replaced with a considerably less engaging plot line which meandered along at a snail's pace. The episodes in which Will hunts for Hannibal in Italy are particularly dull, even more so when one considers the explosive nature of the events that immediately preceded them.

The pacing of the third season is also notably bizarre. The narrative absolutely crawls through the first half depicting the events of Lecter's long awaited capture, before hurtling through Red Dragon's storyline at what feels like light-speed; failing to do appropriate justice to a villain as wickedly epic as Francis Dolarhyde. Hannibal was ultimately cancelled soon after the third season premiered, leaving the fate of the main characters frustratingly ambiguous. While said season is ultimately a fine offering of television on the whole, one cannot escape the sense that the phenomenal premise that fueled the audacious events of the first two seasons was no more.