A sense of impending doom has always saturated Bryan Fuller's intoxicating, elaborately written Hannibal, but it's never been more tangible than in the show's bold and disorienting third season, which finds Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter several months into life as a fugitive in Italy. Mikkelsen's performance to date has been an exercise in restraint, building up this prequel Lecter as a believably stable, cultured, well-liked man whose murderous cannibalism comes as a shock to those who know him, in contrast to the lip-smacking, fava bean-loving Lecter with whom pop culture is more familiar.

Brooke Palmer



But in the early episodes of season three, Mikkelsen allows more flickers of pure savagery to show through the careful mask of civility, putting his cover identity – as a curator at Florence's Palazzo Capponi – on shaky ground from the start. His capture is inevitable, both in terms of the Thomas Harris canon (which is followed closely, though not slavishly obeyed by Fuller) and within the show's own narrative context, where it's noted that Hannibal no longer seems as concerned as he should be about maintaining appearances.

The show's milieu has changed dramatically – where the first two seasons scarcely ventured outside the US state of Virginia, these first three episodes scarcely leave Europe – but its distinctive flavour remains the same, if not richer and more complex than before without the constraints of FBI-led procedural storytelling. There's more scope than ever for delving into the psychology of characters and their dark ties to one another, notably the deliciously paranoid dynamic between Hannibal and his former psychiatrist Bedelia (Gillian Anderson), who's playing wife to his alias Dr Fell.

Series premiere 'Antipasto' is, as its title suggests, a tasting platter, jumping back and forth between different timelines to offer only tantalising glimpses of each. In one, we see the act of violence that has kept Bedelia bound uneasily to Hannibal for years; another fleshes out the fate of a victim from last season, and gives rise to the kind of philosophical debate about cannibalism that will make you marvel – once again – that this is a show that airs on primetime US network television.

Brooke Palmer

The deliberately disorienting jumps through time and space continue into second episode 'Primavera', which also features the show's most ambiguous piece of storytelling to date, setting up an intriguingly unreliable narrator in Hugh Dancy's traumatised Will Graham. Like moth to flame, Will has only grown more obsessed with his former friend since being gutted (physically and emotionally) by him in last season's finale, and the feeling is more than mutual.

Despite a heavy influx of religious iconography, existential searching and the show's reliably visceral brand of bloodletting, this is not a show that takes itself too seriously, never losing sight of the absurdist black comedy inherent in the story of a cultured cannibal. Mikkelsen and Anderson excel together at elegantly downplayed farce – a climactic dinner party scene in 'Antipasto' lays the groundwork for an even more gloriously unhinged one two episodes later.

Making a near-narrative reinvention look effortless, and expanding its visual vocabulary into ever-more imaginative flourishes, Hannibal's third outing secures its place as network television's greatest current triumph.

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