Series 3 of Hannibal is, of course, largely about people who
have been horribly wounded. Cut to pieces. Shattered. Reassembled.
Stitched back together in new shapes. They’ve spent months
‘recovering’, only to discover that the process has fundamentally
changed them. They cannot ‘recover’ their old selves.
The
show itself is taking episodes to ‘recover’ from the trauma of the end
of Series 2. That episode horribly wounded the show itself. Cut it to
pieces. Shattered it. Dismembered it. We are now watching a show, a
formula, a set-up, in fragments. Roughly stitched back together but
unable to return to its former shape.
If Series 1 was a police
procedural slowly going mad because of its own affinities, and Series 2
was a police procedural actually being slowly and gradually usurped and
warped by those ascendant affinities, Series 3 is a police procedural
shattered into fragments and glued back together by a triage doctor in an afterlife casualty ward.
Because Series 3 shouldn’t exist. It shouldn’t be on the air. It is the ghost
of a television programme. It is the reanimated zombie corpse of a
television programme. Series 3 is what television programmes look like
after they’ve ended, after they've been cancelled and are no longer being made and only exist
in the television afterlife.
Which is bitterly ironic, if you think about it.
What are you going to make of it when it comes back on Amazon, I wonder.
ReplyDeleteThat'll probably depend on what it's like then.
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