Can NBC’s ‘Hannibal’ exist in landscape with ‘The Following,’ ‘Bates Motel’?

Television often goes the way of everything else in pop culture: there are fads. Something is popular for a while, and then starts to peter off a little bit while another trend picks up. As of late, the next big thing has been bringing the horror genre effectively to an episodic format. It really started with “American Horror Story,” but since that time “The Following” and “Bates Motel” have also come along and found a little bit of success.

Of course, the irony here is that Hannibal Lecter was a pioneer when the horror genre exploded on the big screen, as he added that psychological and thriller perspective to it perfectly; and now, the small-screen version is coming to NBC tonight in “Hannibal.”

Can this succeed? First of all, we think that the network probably made a mistake in not trying to launch at least the premiere after “The Voice,” that way to really capitalize on the lead-in. When you have this sort of property, why not take advantage of it? The show also has a brilliant mind behind it in Bryan Fuller, creator of “Dead Like Me,” “Pushing Diaries,” and a man who helped on “Heroes” for the short amount of time that it was good. The Thursday night timeslot has killed quite a few NBC shows over the years, and it will have to compete here against two hits in “Scandal” and “Elementary” at a time when fewer people are watching during the week than 9:00.

At the end of the day, though, the good news here is that NBC will likely let this series play out its full order, given that they really have very little to replace “Hannibal” with in the event that it bombs. Given the current state of some of their programming, what did they really have to lose?

Are you planning to watch the “Hannibal” premiere, and do you think that this show will actually be successful at the end of the day? If you want to watch one of the first previews for the show, you can do so over here.

Photo: NBC