Credit: Netflix

Hannibal Lecter has been a famous pop-culture choice, but with one mad contradiction: the man was a monster, but he has always been shown with manners. You get what we mean? Thomas Harris introduced him in the 1981 novel Red Dragon, and filmmakers picked it up in a jiffy.

Brian Cox played him in Michael Mann’s Manhunter, where they called him Hannibal Lecktor. Then Anthony Hopkins came along in The Silence of the Lambs and absolutely smashed it. He came back for Hannibal and Red Dragon, and that was nothing but iconic.

By the time Bryan Fuller brought Hannibal to NBC in 2013, doing another Hopkins impression would have been pointless, wouldn’t it? Who would stand a chance after so many icons? So they went completely their own way.

Mads Mikkelsen plays Lecter as this respected psychiatrist in immaculate suits, throwing gorgeous dinner parties, but do you know what, though? You really don’t want to know what’s on the menu. Hugh Dancy plays Will Graham, an FBI consultant who can climb inside a killer’s mind. It is, until he can’t get back out properly. Netflix added all three seasons to its US catalogue on July 27th, so a whole new crowd can have their heads done in by it.

The story starts with Will helping the FBI solve murders that ordinary investigators can’t make head or tail of. His gift lets him reconstruct exactly what the killer was thinking, but every case takes him deeper into places he really shouldn’t be going. Jack Crawford, played by Laurence Fishburne, brings Hannibal into Will’s life as his psychiatrist and an FBI adviser. Sounds sensible enough, but there is a minor issue: Hannibal’s a cannibalistic serial killer hiding in plain sight.

Hannibal becomes fascinated with Will and starts messing with his head. He keeps information back during treatment, steers investigations away from himself and keeps testing how much darkness Will can handle. The man has got some nerve! Will knows something isn’t right, but proving it gets harder when his health starts going west. And that relationship is what makes the whole series work.

Fuller has mentioned directors like David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick as influences, and once you watch, you realise it. It looks nothing like a normal network crime drama. The murder scenes resemble art installations, and half the time you’re not sure what’s actually happening. The show pulls from several Thomas Harris novels too.

Did you know Fuller never planned Hannibal as some little three-season job? Not a chance. His original idea stretched across seven full seasons and would’ve worked through even more of Thomas Harris’s novels. Seven seasons! Imagine where that could’ve gone.

Now don’t go thinking it’s just some little footnote to the films. Not in a million years. It has got its own language and a completely different Lecter. New viewers need to know this isn’t some normal police procedural where everything has a cookie-cutter ending. It is more like a nightmare that keeps getting stranger. You better be prepared for this one.