Netflix Just Added One Of TV’s Best Crime Shows Ever

HANNIBAL — “Primavera” Episode 302 — Pictured: Hugh Dancy as Will Graham — (Photo by: Brooke Palmer/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Scrolling through Netflix over the past few weeks, I cannot say I have found anything to break me out of my Apple TV addiction, with about 3-4 shows I tune in for every week. Now? That’s changed, even if it’s something I’ve already seen.

Netflix has added one of the best TV crime dramas ever made, a show so unique for its time it’s easy to wonder how it was ever allowed to exist on broadcast television in the first place.

The series is Hannibal, what once seemed like a rather poor idea, an attempt to adapt a prequel to an Oscar-winning, all-time classic film for television. Well, as it turned out, the show was a roaring success. The new version of Hannibal starred Mads Mikkelsen as a pre-imprisoned Hannibal Lecter, forging a relationship with Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham. The show ran for three seasons starting in 2012, airing on NBC despite being one of the most disturbingly violent television series ever at that point, particularly in Hannibal’s display of his victims.

The show was and is beloved. It has a stellar 8.5/10 on IMDB, and 93% and 94% Rotten Tomatoes critic and audience scores, respectively. It’s a frustrating series as it does have at least kind of a wrap-up ending for the arc of the two leads, but obviously there would have been more to come. There was always talk of then taking the series into the most famous chapter, The Silence of the Lambs, but the show was cancelled after season 3, so they never got the chance.

There has been talk of getting the gang back together for a eons now, but nothing has come of it, unfortunately. The cast remains “eager to return,” according to the last reports, though it would need to be picked up by a streamer. There are complicating factors, however, such as who owns the property rights and how that would affect a revival. It is a bit of a Mindhunter situation, the Netflix original that many would consider the best in the service’s history, but it was cancelled regardless, and no one has reversed course and made a third season happen, despite how much fans are dying to see the story progress further.

In this age of reboots and revisitations, I don’t think we can rule anything out. I mean, Dexter returned after over a decade and actually is good again, so anything is possible. If you think all this may be hyperbole, you’re welcome to go see for yourself on Netflix now. Hannibal is a beautiful, horrifying series, and we have not seen anything like it before or since.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.