Hannibal is an American psychological thriller television series developed by Bryan Fuller for NBC, who serves as an executive producer along with Sidonie Dumas, Christophe Riandee, Katie O'Connell, Elisa Roth, Sara Colleton, David Slade, Chris Brancato, Jesse Alexander, Michael Rymer, Steve Lightfoot and Martha De Laurentiis. The series, based upon characters and elements appearing in the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, focuses on the budding relationship between FBI special investigator Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), a forensic psychiatrist destined to become Graham's most cunning enemy. Special Agent-in-Charge Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) pulls Graham, who struggles due to his ability to empathize with serial killers, from his teaching job to help investigate only the most gruesome and bizarre of murders. Other experts who work alongside Graham are fiber analysis specialist Dr. Beverly Katz (Hettienne Park), crime scene investigator Brian Zeller (Aaron Abrams) and latent fingerprints expert Jimmy Price (Scott Thompson). While psychiatric professor Dr. Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) tries to help Graham stabilize his mind, crime blogger Fredricka "Freddie" Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki) attempts to use him and his cases to make a name for herself.

The series premiered on April 4, 2013. Each episode of the first season is named after an element of French cuisine. The season two titles adopt a Japanese motif.

Jack Crawford visits Dr. Hannibal Lecter at his home and immediately attacks him. A brutal fight ensues and Lecter slashes his neck with a piece of broken glass and, bleeding profusely, Crawford manages to lock himself in Lecter's wine cellar. Twelve weeks earlier, Kade Prurnell (Cynthia Nixon), an investigator for the Inspector General's Office, warns Crawford of his misconduct and pressures Alana Bloom into repealing her statement about Crawford's mishandling of Graham's instability, which she refuses. Lecter gets to walk in Graham's shoes when six partially preserved bodies are found in a river. Lecter theorizes that the killer is preserving the bodies to create a human model collection and that those in the river are imperfect castoffs. In the Baltimore asylum, Graham is determined to uncover how Lecter set him up and enlists Alana to help him recover lost memories through hypnosis. He has a flashback of Lecter inserting Abigail Hobbs' ear into his stomach through his throat. The killer strikes again, kidnapping a young man and taking him, alive, to an empty silo where his collection is revealed: an interconnected collage of naked bodies.