15 Best Horror TV Series

Thomas Harris' Red Dragon series are brilliant novels; Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs is a fantastic film. It seemed that the bar was set impossibly high, but against all odds, Hannibal became a modern classic, equally as impressive as its sources.

Let's begin with the elephant in the room: Mads Mikkelsen. He achieves the impossible, and pulls off a better Hannibal Lecter than Anthony Hopkins and Brian Cox. There: I said it. Before Hannibal, the role was synonymous with Hopkins; it's extraordinary how much Mikkelsen is able to bring to such an already complex villain. As with Freddie Highmore in Bates Motel, he does a masterful job of handling the transition between the character we're first introduced to and the version of the character that we know is coming. The difference of course being that there is no downwards spiral for Lecter as there is for Norman; he's a unforgiving psychopath from the word 'go'. Watching him effortlessly cover his tracks and operate under the FBI's nose is incredibly entertaining. Laurence Fishburne and Hugh Dancy (admit it, it blew your mind when you found out he was British) are also brilliant as Jack Crawford and Will Graham, respectively.

The show has plenty of inventive murders and elaborately designed crime scenes to make you wince: from a human totem pole to a mushroom patch of corpses.