---
title: "Hannibal"
year: 2013
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/hannibal-2013"
fi1m_score: 81
critics_score: 70
critics_reviews: 8
published: "2026-09-17T02:28:10.011331+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T02:28:23.682394+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Hannibal (2013)

Created by Bryan Fuller · 45m · MPA TV-MA · Drama, Crime

**Fi1m score: 81** · Critics 70 from 8 reviews

*In a sentence:* Three seasons of the FBI eating the evidence and complimenting the chef

> Bryan Fuller’s series takes the most familiar monster in the cinema and makes him new by keeping him at the dinner table. It is as handsome as television gets, and now and then it loves its corpses more than its people.

## Synopsis

Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) teaches at the FBI academy at Quantico and has a gift he would rather not have: he can stand in a room where someone has died and imagine, in detail, how the killer did it. Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne), head of the Behavioral Science Unit, pulls him back into the field to find a man who has taken eight girls in Minnesota. Worried about what the work does to Will, Crawford asks a Baltimore psychiatrist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), to keep an eye on him. Dr. Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) thinks this is a bad idea. Lecter cooks the two men dinner. Nobody at the FBI asks what is in it.

## Review

Bryan Fuller goes back to before Thomas Harris’s *Red Dragon*, to the point where Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter first sat in a room together, and asks how a man whose job is to see killers failed to see this one. It is a good question and the series gets three seasons and 39 episodes out of it. *Hannibal* is very good. It is also, at times, so pleased with the way it has arranged a body that it forgets to be about anyone alive.

Mads Mikkelsen plays Lecter without the relish Anthony Hopkins brought to him. He barely raises his voice. He tilts his head, waits, and lets a small amusement pass across his face when someone says something he can use later. Christopher Hargadon dresses him in three-piece suits of plaid and paisley that no honest man would wear, and he cooks in long, close, quiet sequences in which a knife goes through something dark and the fat hisses in the pan. We knew what it was. We were hungry anyway, and then a little ashamed of ourselves. That is the trick the whole series plays, and Mikkelsen plays it best.

Hugh Dancy’s Will is the opposite instrument. He sweats, pushes his glasses up, will not meet anyone’s eye, and can look at a corpse for an hour. Dancy makes the gift look like an illness, which it is. When the two men talk, which is often and at length, the series is doing the thing nobody else on television was doing: a psychiatrist and a patient, both lying, both aware of it, both enjoying it.

James Hawkinson and Karim Hussain shoot nearly everything in dark rooms with a single warm source and the focus so shallow that a face is sharp and the wall behind it is soup. Crime scenes are lit like paintings, a girl mounted on a stag’s antlers in a field, and the editors, Michael Doherty, Art Jones, Ben Wilkinson and Stephen Philipson, rewind each one with a swinging pendulum of light so that Will can walk through the killing as the killer. Brian Reitzell’s score has no tune. It scrapes, ticks and breathes, and it is often the only thing telling us how frightened to be.

Here is where we were got at. An episode in the first season opens a man’s throat and plays his vocal cords like a cello, and we were horrified, properly, sitting back from the screen. We were also aware, a second later, that we had been shown something composed for us to admire, and that is the series’ weakness. Too many of the first season’s killings are window displays. The case-of-the-week format wants a new monster every 45 minutes and the writers oblige, and for stretches the two men at the table wait in the wings while somebody assembles a totem pole out of the dead. The series improves as it trusts them more and the cases less.

The rest of the cast is better than it needs to be. Laurence Fishburne gives Jack Crawford a heavy, tired authority; he uses Will as a tool, knows it, and cannot stop. Caroline Dhavernas’s Alana is the one voice saying no. Hettienne Park’s Beverly Katz gives the lab scenes a pulse. Gillian Anderson, as Lecter’s own psychiatrist Bedelia Du Maurier, gets a few scenes a season, says almost nothing, hears everything, and is the best thing in the series outside the two leads.

Michael Mann’s [*Manhunter*](https://film.one/film/manhunter) (1986) treated Graham as a policeman. [*The Silence of the Lambs*](https://film.one/film/the-silence-of-the-lambs) (1991) kept Lecter behind glass. Fuller puts him in the kitchen with the door open, which is the boldest choice anyone has made with the character and the one that pays. The cost comes in the third season, whose first half slows almost to a stop and whose dialogue thickens until everyone speaks in aphorisms, like labels on expensive wine. It takes a turn we will not describe, and recovers, but it asks a good deal of patience first.

Watch it at home, in the dark, with the plates cleared away. It runs 45 minutes an episode and carries an 18, and for once the certificate is a description rather than a warning.

*Fi1m score 81, published 17 September 2026.*

### Reviews we read (8)

- **Empire**, William Thomas (90/100, inferred): The series is a superlative TV take on cinema's greatest psycho, where the how matters despite knowing the outcome. It varies in narrative satisfaction but features cameos from the Thomas Harris texts and horrific, magnetic beauty. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/hannibal-review-2/)
- **Vulture**, Matt Zoller Seitz (85/100, inferred): The critic calls Hannibal the most beautiful series on network TV, praising its dreamlike, sculptural visuals, color, texture, and impressionistic imagery over familiar serial-killer plotting. Performances are strong but secondary to the stylistic experience. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2013/04/tv-review-hannibal.html)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Tim Goodman (70/100, inferred): The series takes a familiar procedural and makes it feel like a cable series, engaging and haunting without being formulaic. It is beautifully shot and a surprisingly thoughtful look at darkness haunting Will Graham. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/hannibal-tv-review-433109/)
- **Variety**, Brian Lowry (70/100, inferred): The series has a semi-hypnotic quality as a prequel adaptation, ungainly and messy but visually arresting and interesting thanks to the central performances. The creepy tone and Mikkelsen's understated take on Lecter make it work. [Read](https://variety.com/2013/tv/reviews/hannibal-nbc-bryan-fuller-1200330510/)
- **The Guardian** (50/100, inferred): The review finds the twisted relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter the most interesting aspect of the show, with genuine edge in their scenes. It complains that too much budget and screen time goes to explicitly gross murder scenes rather than more of the central dynamic. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/may/15/frankie-keeping-britain-alive-hannibal-review)
- **The Independent** (50/100, inferred): The review praises the cast, especially Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy, and finds the concept intriguing but criticises the immediate dive into a standard procedural format instead of exploring the leads more deeply. It concludes the show is edible but not quite cordon bleu. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/tv-review-hannibal-sky-living-needs-more-bite-8606708.html)
- **Digital Spy**, Morgan Jeffery (4/5): The premiere is visually inventive and dark with an outstanding cast, particularly Mikkelsen's creepy Lecter and the Graham-Lecter dynamic; it delivers an enjoyably nightmarish tone and ranks among NBC's best recent drama pilots despite the familiar source material. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a470802/hannibal-premiere-review-is-nbcs-new-horror-drama-a-tasty-treat/)
- **Den of Geek**, Laura Akers (70/100, inferred): The pilot is promising with gorgeous cinematography, strong casting (especially Dancy and Fishburne), and effective stylistic touches that make it feel like cable TV; Mikkelsen shows menace but faces a high bar. It has definite potential despite a weak initial case plot. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/hannibal-episode-1-review-aperitif/)

## Details

- **Created by:** Bryan Fuller
- **Creator:** Bryan Fuller
- **Director:** Michael Rymer, Guillermo Navarro, Vincenzo Natali, David Slade, Tim Hunter, Peter Medak, John Dahl, David Semel, Adam Kane, James Foley, Neil Marshall, Marc Jobst
- **Writer:** Bryan Fuller, Steve Lightfoot, Scott Nimerfro, Jeff Vlaming, Chris Brancato, Andrew Black, Nick Antosca, Kai Wu, Don Mancini, Jennifer Schuur, Helen Shang, Jesse Alexander, Ayanna Floyd Davis, Tom de Ville, Angela LaManna, David Fury, Jim Danger Gray, Angelina Burnett, Jason Grote
- **Teleplay:** Bryan Fuller, Steve Lightfoot, Scott Nimerfro, Chris Brancato, Andrew Black, Kai Wu
- **Cinematography:** James Hawkinson, Karim Hussain
- **Editor:** Michael Doherty, Ben Wilkinson, Stephen Philipson, Art Jones
- **Music:** Brian Reitzell
- **Costume design:** Christopher Hargadon
- **Producer:** Jesse Alexander, Michael Wray
- **Cast:** Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Hannibal Lecter; Hugh Dancy as Will Graham; Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford; Caroline Dhavernas as Dr. Alana Bloom; Gillian Anderson as Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier; Hettienne Park as Beverly Katz; Ellen Greene as Mrs. Komeda; Lance Henriksen as Lawrence Wells
- **Runtime:** 45m
- **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA
- **Release (the US):** 4 April 2013
- **Genres:** Drama, Crime

## Where to watch in the US

- Netflix: streaming
- Amazon Prime Video: streaming

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, CA, CH, CL, CO, DE, DK, FI, FR, GB, IE, IT, JP, NO, NZ, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Saturn Awards 2015: Best Actor on Television (won)

## If you liked this

- *Manhunter* (1986), Fi1m 84: Michael Mann’s cool, neon version of the same case; Graham as a policeman, not a patient. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/manhunter.md)
- *Memories of Murder* (2003): Bong Joon-ho’s rain-soaked hunt for a killer, funny and then not funny at all. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/memories-of-murder.md)
- *The Fall* (2013): Belfast, Gillian Anderson, and a killer the series refuses to make glamorous.
- *Mindhunter* (2017): The FBI learns to interview monsters; all talk, no tableaux, and the better for it.
- *Pushing Daisies* (2007), Fi1m 82: Fuller’s earlier series: the same appetite for colour and death, with pie instead of people. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/pushing-daisies.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/hannibal-2013