10 TV Shows That Were Right To Deviate From The Source Material

3. Hannibal

When Bryan Fuller€™s grandiose, high-concept version of Thomas Harris€™s literate, sinister Hannibal Lecter serial killer franchise was announced, many couldn€™t see the need for another adaptation of the property, especially on network television (of all things). After all, this was a character forever identified with Sir Anthony Hopkins€™ high-camp, reptilian performances in horror/thriller features like The Silence Of The Lambs and Hannibal. How was NBC - the home of Friends, ER, Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live - going to compete with that? By ignoring what had come before, and upping the ante. Remarkably, Fuller didn€™t go the safer route and present us with a bloodless procedural, with Doctor Lecter the pantomime villain always a step ahead of the well-intentioned police. His Hannibal - a gory, cerebral grand guignol nightmare - was a show and a character that belonged on cable, somehow arriving on broadcast TV instead, uncut and uncensored for the most part. I€™m still not sure how he managed it, but Bryan Fuller gave us a character everyone thought they knew and provided a completely fresh take on him, and on his nemesis, troubled and empathetic profiler Will Graham. For the most part doling out new stories detailing the events leading up to Red Dragon, The Silence Of The Lambs and Hannibal, Fuller€™s show was more intellectual than Harris€™ novels, and more horrific than the movies made from them in the past. The Lecter character was just as much a savant, but an artist as well, a Mephistophelean manipulator, lonely and aloof. Mads Mikkelson was a revelation in the role: a charming, dispassionate dandy, an erudite, psychoanalytic genius, and a gourmet in the kitchen. Fuller€™s own genius was in taking the source material and actually surpassing it in every possible respect. On a network TV show! Who€™d have thought it?