Quick! What’s the weirdest, stupidest, most nonsensical idea for a network television drama you can think of? Is it a story about sub-trans-dimensional mice cross breeding with a race of intergalactic spiders in a horrifying plot to steal all of Earth’s cheese? No? Ok. Was it a watered down TV version of the infamously non-TV appropriate cannibal/murderer/insane character Hannibal Lector? Then BOY HAVE I GOT GREAT NEWS FOR YOU!
So let’s pretend for a minute that the idea isn’t inherently flawed, and instead focus on what could be good about this. Firstly, Mads Mikkelson as Hannibal Lector is pretty excellent casting, and anybody who’s seen the Pusher movies or Valhalla Rising knows the guy has the chops to pull off the role. The problem with that is it’ll inevitably create a terrible vacuum as he’ll be the only good thing about the show, and almost everything else will be awful. I mean, I don’t expect Laurence Fishburne to stay on the cast for long. If there was ever a character who reeked of “Shocking Surprise Death!” it’s him. The whole show seems like a doomed idea, because Hannibal just doesn’t seem suited for any sort of long form serialized medium, and especially the medium of network television. Will he suddenly just NOT be a cannibal? Or will they skirt around it with implications and whatnot? Furthermore, the whole thing looks like somebody saw Silence Of The Lambs, Red Dragon, Manhunter and Hannibal and said “MAKE IT A SHOW DAMMIT!”
On top of that I have a weird personal problem where I keep getting Mads Mikkelson mixed up with recent hip hop artist Macklemore. Well, not literally. I just got really drunk once and couldn’t say “Mads Mikkelson”, and kept slurring his name until “Macklemore” came out, and eventually I started insisting that Macklemore was actually an actor and was really good in Casino Royale. It annoyed everyone.
Grizzly Bomb 