10 Reasons Hannibal Was The Best Show On TV

Though Hugh Dancy and Laurence Fishburne share top-billing with Mads Mikkelsen (and Dancy has about the same amount of screen-time), for the sake of ease let’s refer to them as the supporting cast.

And what a cast. Dancy (as Will Graham) is the yin to Lecter’s yang, and much of the show (especially the first season) is played out in the haze of his subconscious. Dancy plays Graham as a taciturn professional who can match Hannibal in the intelligence stakes and who will grow to match him in the murderous ones, too. If he’s a little shaky in the first season, in which his ‘this is my design’ segments can become tedious, then he’s a force of nature in the second, as Graham learns to separate himself from Hannibal in the crucial moments, even developing a sense of humour along the way.

Then there’s Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford, a tough-as-nails captain who’s no slouch intellectually, either. Fishburne gets many of the best lines throughout Hannibal, and it’s in his touching scenes with his terminally ill wife, Bella, that Hannibal reaches its most profound levels of tenderness. Fishburne has always been a fine actor, and his work in Hannibal is up there with his very best. His reveal in season three is one of the show’s great moments.