'Hannibal': Beautiful, Radical, Hilariously Ridiculous

Hannibal is the most radical enterprise on network television right now. It frames its serial-killer story with beautifully composed shots of bodies in motion (whether they’re running in terror or gliding across a dance floor), close-ups of meat being prepared with loving tenderness (that some of the stuff is human flesh is meant to add a tangy dash of irony), and hallucinatory editing that leaves a viewer wondering if any given scene is real, a dream, or a nightmare.

Season 3 finds Hannibal relocated — initially, at least — to Italy, where Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter has moved with his former psychiatrist-turned-paramour, Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson). The bloodbath that concluded Season 2 is, in an opening-moments switcheroo typical of the way series creator Bryan Fuller likes to keep viewers off-balance, left ignored. But like every other element in this series, nothing from the past is ever truly buried — it’s just waiting to return, usually in a more horrifying form.

Have I praised Hannibal’s visual and imaginative ingenuity sufficiently? Good. Because now I get to say that Hannibal is also one of the most hilariously ridiculous shows on TV. The fussy perfectionism of Hannibal Lecter, from his impeccable suits with jaunty pocket squares to his smirking murmurs of polysyllabic nonsense, is screamingly camp while lacking the wit of truly accomplished camp.

Fuller and his directors — most notably Vincenzo Natali, who did the new season’s first three episodes available to critics for review — have taken the novels of Thomas Harris and the Hannibal movies made by Michael Mann, Jonathan Demme, Ridley Scott, Brett Ratner, and Peter Webber, and amped up an over-the-top voluptuousness of violence.

Blood baths? Hannibal never met a bathtub it couldn’t fill. Cannibalism? By now, Hannibal has feasted on so many limbs of Lecter’s languid victims, Bedelia elicits a snicker in the premiere when she tells a dinner guest, “I’m trying not to eat anything with a central nervous system.” Anderson is so good in this role, I half expected to see her dipping a spoon into a cup of Activa and consuming it with relish. Or without relish — if Lecter made that condiment, it probably contains minced eyeballs or something.

The dialogue in Hannibal is a non-stop soundtrack of fatuous blather. Lines are written as wise aphorisms whose wisdom evaporates if you think about what’s being said for more than a few seconds. “Betrayal and forgiveness are best seen as akin to falling in love.” Um, really? “Morality doesn’t exist — only morale.” Or maybe he said “morels”? Hannibal would love to whip up a batch of those mushrooms, with a lot of garlic. “Hannibal doesn’t pray, but he believes in God, intimately.” Ooh — it’s that final “intimately” that gives the line its… pointlessness.

Related: Ask the Fans: ‘Hannibal’ Showrunner Bryan Fuller Responds to Your Answers

Have you ever noticed that everyone talks the same way in Hannibal, with uniform portentousness? Take this line from the new season and tell me who says it: “If everything that can happen happens, then you can never really do the wrong thing.” Put aside whether that makes any sense whatsoever. Is it Lecter? Will Graham? Bedelia? My lips are sealed. Mostly because I’m afraid of what Hannibal might shove into it as punishment.

And always, everything is spoken slowly, softly, accompanied by meaningful stares that stop just this side of waggling eyebrows. I’d love to see the outtakes of the dinner scenes: Mikkelsen and Anderson must collapse in giggles as soon as someone yells, “Cut!” If the show had a smidgeon of realism, there would by now have been at least one character who, after being subjected to a patented Hannibal monologue about the nature of death and art, would have laughed in this poser’s face. Instead, everyone holds Lecter in awe — and those who doubt his perfection are invariably either proven wrong or eaten.

The show takes its time bringing back Hugh Dancy’s Will (a permanent sheen of panicked sweat films his face) and Laurence Fishburne’s Jack Crawford (oh, if only Fishburne’s foxy-grandpa character from Black-ish would pop up to say, “What is this foolishness going on here?”). Fuller has announced that the back end of this season is going to deal with material from Harris’s first Lecter-thon, Red Dragon, which will give us a chance to see how it stacks up against Michael Mann’s still-hypnotic 1986 film Manhunter, the best Dragon adaptation to date.

But then, Hannibal as its main character been reconceived for television isn’t really comparable to anything else — that is, until Amy Schumer gets around to parodying the NBC show, her Did-I-do-that? toothy smile filled with bits of shredded salami passing as chewed flesh. Please make this happen, Amy.

Hannibal airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.