While viewers may be suspicious of Dr. Hannibal Lecter and his fork in the new TV series "Hannibal," the FBI team he works intimately with is clueless.
“Hannibal,” the latest television series written by Lewiston-Clarkston Valley native Bryan Fuller, starts at 10 p.m. Thursday, April 4 on NBC. Variety called it, “the tastiest drama the network has introduced in awhile.”
The premiere, titled “Aperitif,” opens with the FBI investigating cases involving missing college students. Agent Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) recruits talented, young criminal profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy). Joining the team is the calm and suave psychologist Lecter who harbors a dark secret. Lecter is played by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen who starred as the villain Le Chiffre in the 2006 James Bond film “Casino Royale.”
In an interview last fall from Toronto where the series was shot, Fuller, 43, told Inland 360 the show will explore the relationship between Lecter and Graham. The characters are drawn from Thomas Harris’ novel “Red Dragon” but Fuller fleshed out the back story between the two who meet after Graham has a work-induced mental breakdown. Like many of Fuller’s other shows, including “Pushing Daisies” and last fall’s “Mockingbird Lane,” the series has a rich color palette and a noir mood.
As a horror fan Fuller said he saw the series as “the opportunity to write scarier, darker material, but doing it in a way that there’s intelligence.”
In other interviews Fuller has said the first season of “Hannibal” is the “bromance” between Lecter and Graham and season two is the “ugly break-up.”
