10 Reasons Hannibal Was The Best Show On TV
6. It Assumes A Level Of Intelligence On The Viewer's Part
Like The Wire before it, Hannibal assumes, and even expects, a level of intelligence on the part of the spectator. Where The Wire asked if the viewer understood politics, education reform, worker’s rights, race relations, police procedure, chess, class and The Great Gatsby, Hannibal asks the viewer if they understand art, psychoanalysis, the human condition, mental illness, dream logic, beauty, portraiture, God, religion and nature.
These are big, brazen questions; questions that the greatest minds have pondered for centuries. It’s a bold move from Fuller and his writers to try and address these themes within 45 minutes on network TV, but that’s what Hannibal does, and it does so while still operating under the guise of ‘police procedural’—after all, Hannibal is, ostensibly, about a serial killer and the efforts of those who are trying to catch him.
Hannibal then, by its very nature, attains operatic levels of opulence, thus becoming more akin to a Greek tragedy than any other television show before or since. This is not necessarily a new ambition (The Sopranos had the same ideas), but the sincerity with which Hannibal delves into its own figurative approach marks it out as the show that has come closest to its rhapsodic ideals.