One of the most disturbing shows on TV is also one of the most sincere, and that dichotomy injects tension and pathos into almost every scene. It’s hard to watch, but “Hannibal” rarely loses sight of Will Graham’s humanity – and Hannibal Lecter’s fascination with the psychological mechanisms that make that humanity possible.

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It’s also one of the scariest shows in TV history, delivering images every week so potent that they lodge in the viewer’s memory like rusty barbs. And yet for all of its ugliness and horror, it is an intensely pleasurable experience, appallingly sensual, laying out food, furniture, clothes, windows, doors, and landscapes with painterly exactness.

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The ensemble cast is one of the best on television, and one of the most heroic, considering the ludicrousness they are expected to put across: Mads Mikkelsen, Hugh Dancy, Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, and Gillian Anderson, and a regular stream of superb guest-actors counteract the extremity of Fuller’s images with understated, wryly funny performances.

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