I dodged the hype for this when it first came out but saw a review on youtube for the first episode. i liked the hannibal lecter movies so i thought why not and sat down during lockdown and binged watched the whole 3 seasons in one weekend. by season two i wish hadn't started at all. i hated every single cast member in this .will graham's the most. he irritated the crap out of me. from his huge head that didn't fit his body to his terrible acting. his smugness just left me feeling like i wanted to chuck the remote through the tv . his "little episodes" where he goes into a trance and predicts everything was just over the top and made him look like some sort of psychic and not a educated man who understands his chosen field of work and just wings it from his visions. if you were any sort of law enforcement and he turned up to the crime scene doing that thing where he sits a sweats you would have him sectioned for clearly being mentally unstable but good old jack crawford clears out the scene to let this clearly unhinged "teacher " have an epileptic fit all over the crime scene. there's also points where you would be clearly pointing the finger at will himself after one of his "moments" any normal policeman would at least wanna question him of his whereabouts etc and ask why he's always right but nope it's just wills special powers etc.and everybody in this very real world just accepts it . will graham (and other characters) are just like some sort of 80s action hero. he got stabbed, gutted ,shot twice, beaten up beyond recognition but he was fixed up just fine.no bruising,not even a slight limp. i'm all for the "hero" to be a bit hard and take some beats during his travels but this is just wayyyyy over the top. half way through we named him the T1000 because even if you stab him or rip his guts out he just moulds back to perfect health.

jack crawford in this has to be the thickest character on the show,hes like the patrick star of hannibal .even though it was a small part the jack crawford in the films acted like a professional .in this jack crawford came across as a complete buffoon. not only does he let a nutjob like will graham hang around crime scenes sweating all over the evidence and wont lock the guy the guy up in a nut house where he needs to be. he needs everything explained to him in detail. yes this could be exposition helping us the viewers understand what's going on but you don't need him to ask "uh?" " what does that mean?" everytime hes on screen. maybe write the scenes a little better and we don't need everything explained to us through jack ....who is "the guru" in-Charge of the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI and should already know all this ....

the new hannibal lecter at first i was skeptical about. hannibal lecter for me has and always will be anthony hopkins. he is the only true hannibal lecter. but i thought ok let's give him a shot . in small amounts it would have been bearable. but he's so overbearing in this it really wears thin very quickly. he doesn't seem suave and sophisticated he looks likes he really would just like to stab the next person that walks past him right in the eye . i get they were going with creepy lecter but they should know lecter has a jekyll and hyde thing about him where if he's not one he's the other .this one looks nuts and acts nuts all the time and has the charisma of a shopping trolly .not to mention the strange love thing he has going on for will graham. where did that come from ?? i was always led to believe that lecter wanted will graham dead in the end but enjoyed playing around with him as a cat would do if it caught a injured mouse. but nope just straight up falls in love with him even though we haven't been given any indication he's gay,..he fell in love with his mind but now wants to be with him .... what ????? you could have had him enjoy having a adversary like will graham who is just a smart and have them battle it out with smart decisions , sort of a "battle of the brains "and them keeping each other on their toes using strategic and very well thought out mind games on each other. but i'm guessing the writers weren't smart enough to keep that up so the just went with hannibal is gay and will is autistic ....

this was the worst series ives watched in a long time it was full of boring long winded dialogue that never went anywhere. the flashback scenes were not needed or at a push needed very little. they drowned it slow mo shots flashbacks dream sequences and terrible storylines and lots of blood .it somewhat reminded me of that tv show "lost " where everyone gets a flashback moment and there's people returning back from the dead because of lazy writing (at least lost had a excuse with the writers strike ).if you took out all the flashbacks and slo mo shots you would have like 10 minutes a season ..(exaggeration...yes,i know but i deserved a shot at it after wasting a weekend watching it )

overall i think they started out thinking it was going to very clever and sophisticated. they did have the very smart and sophisticated dr hannibal lecter at their disposal ,how could they possibly mess it up ...amazingly they somehow managed it ...a few episodes in it just ended up a very over the top and very boring series about some guy with 12 dogs and his partner in crime whose swedish and they go round solving murder mysteries and in their spare time one collects dogs and the other likes to cook humans . there's a girl who keeps coming back from the dead for some reason but both will and his daddy hannibal wanna adopt her ..(sounds like a cannibalistic scooby doo)

if you wanna good show about physiatrists that are smarter and more sophisticated and charming than anybody on this show go watch frasier. there's a old ex policeman and a dog in it also so close enough

oh and Gillian Anderson's acting in this was terrible .