Hannibal Cancelled, By NBC At Least

Look, I'm not an idiot. Frankly, it was some kind of miracle that NBC allowed Hannibal to get to a third season, given how incredibly not-network the show has been. But ultimately, they've pulled the plug on this horrifyingly wonderful show.

Certainly the violence of the series made it a very, very, very odd fit for a show on broadcast television, but Bryan Fuller's commitment to abstraction and an expressionistic style of filmmaking tested audiences - and most of that audience wanted nothing to do with it.

It's easy to get into a film-buff (or tv-buff, though the two are really just different branches of the same tree) bubble, where you forget that most people who watch shows on television or movies in theaters are really in it for pure entertainment. I don't mean that in an elitist way - some people really care more about the real world. We art-nuts are the ones with the strange disease/addiction, but it's a shared malady that has allowed us to feel a sense of community.

Hannibal, the TV show, was not made for general consumption, and so it was quite odd indeed that it wound up on NBC. Now, to be fair to NBC, it's the network that tends to have most of the shows I like, or at least it was a couple years ago. Its comedies from the past decade like 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Community were among my favorites. But what I enjoy a lot in a television show is a great deal of depth - layers to be pulled back to discover more.

But shows that reward viewers for paying obsessive attention effectively punish those who don't, and so a show that is broad but shallow will appeal to more audiences, who just aren't interested in putting their energies into analyzing a show, and would rather use that entertainment as a way to unwind from other challenges in their lives.

Hannibal was one of the most challenging shows I've ever seen on television. And while we're used to seeing that type of program on cable, the broadcast networks have always, by economic necessity, been forced to cast a wide net.

So I do not in any way blame NBC for canceling Hannibal. In fact, I'm shocked they didn't do it earlier. Its viewership was minuscule, and even if it cost them very little to exhibit, NBC is a company that needs to maximize the profitability of its entire schedule.

BUT:

The good news is that we're in an era where many such shows don't really need to be associated with a given network to survive. Community, seemingly cancelled multiple times by NBC, now lives on with Yahoo.

Given the fact, also, that Hannibal is largely financed outside of NBC's budget, a move to another platform might not have a negative impact on the show's producers' ability to retain the same quality.

I would personally love to see Hannibal survive long enough to get through all the books' stories (hopefully they can get the rights worked out to Silence of the Lambs,) but there will definitely be some new challenges in finding a way to distribute the show.

I'm fairly confident, however, that if the financial backers of the show were willing to keep it funded when it had a .5 rating on NBC, they'll continue to do so if it becomes an Amazon Prime or similar program. (And maybe we'll stop having to deal with the bizarrely skewed FCC morals on standards and practices - no more blurred Botticelli butts.)