This series is remarkable, perhaps even unique, (There is much in the way of TV I have never seen) in four ways:

1. the adrenalin level never lets up. You are perpetually on the edge of your seat, dragged from terror, to horror, to anger, to disgust, ...

2. The crimes are the most imaginative and over the top I have ever seen in a TV series.

3. Hugh Dancy, who plays Will Graham, is so vulnerable, so on the edge, and completely convincing. Watching him is like watching a baby who has crawled out onto a high-rise balcony and the railing is broken. At first I thought Will was Jim True-Frost who played Det. Roland 'Prez' Pryzbylewski on The Wire, but they are two different actors. Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Dr. Hannibal Lecter, is like a perfect Bond villain, so smooth, cold, polite, calm. He is like a cobra stalking. His light Danish accent gives him a hint of Nazi menace, without making him sound too much like Victor Borge. The casting is spot on for the other characters too.

4. The gore special effects are very hard to remind yourself you are not seeing something real. They did not skimp.

However the show has one highly annoying flaw. Will Graham, just KNOWS the details of how any crime happened, without almost no detective work. All he has to do is walk backwards at the crime scene, and magically he can see back in time and watch the events, and know the thoughts, motives and emotions of the killer. Further, He has so problem convincing others of his Ouija board infallible evidence. There was a similar TV Series called Medium. This gimmick is a lazy-man's way of avoiding having to compose logical and intriguing ways to deduce the killer from subtle clues. An episode is like the mirror image of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Psychic cop is shooting fish in a barrel. Oddly, the dodge is closely related to those Christian entertainments about angels, Jesus and god, using bizarre divine intervention as the primary plot engine.