NBC to bring Hannibal Lecter into your home on a weekly basis

First there was talk a month or so ago about bringing PSYCHO to the small screen, and now Hannibal Lector has received the greenlight for 13 episodes of a brand-new TV show called, well, “Hannibal.”

The show will be both written and executive produced by Bryan Fuller (“Pushing Daisies”), and “is described as a contemporary thriller series featuring the classic characters from Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon – FBI agent Will Graham and his mentor Dr. Hannibal Lecter – who are re-introduced at the beginning of their budding relationship.” In an interesting bit of television wheeling-and-dealing, a deal was made with “Hannibal” wherein NBC would order a series straight off if they liked the first script, rather than shoot a pilot first and judge off of that as is more normal.

This may end up being the best TV show ever made, but that still won’t change my annoyance at messing further with this world and the players therein.  I just don’t know what new information we are meant to glean from or discover about these characters to warrant the kind of time/money investment TV can require.  And not that that there has to be crazy cannibal-related blood and guts and gore spurting all over the place, but a great deal of what allows THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS to be so incredibly effective is how damn disturbing the R rating allows it to be.  Because it is, to me, the single most disturbing movie I have ever seen.  So how’s something like Buffalo Bill going to fly on TV in anything more than a watered-down form? I don’t know.  Do you? If this has to be done, how can Bryan Fuller best honor these characters?

I’m pretty sure we know exactly what Hannibal himself thinks of this idea: