Shakespeare is the first writer known to use the phrase “With bated breath” [in The Merchant of Venice].
Three centuries later, Mark Twain uses the phrase in Tom Sawyer: “Every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale”. Today, I dare to use the phrase to describe how painful it has been to wait for Season 3 of Hannibal to start. I’ve impatiently been waiting with bated breath for Hannibal to start again. (Phrase definition: ‘Breathing that is subdued because of extreme emotion or emotional difficulty’).

There are hosts of reasons why I’ve been holding my breath in anticipation. Firstly, the season two finale was a breathtaking fiesta of the senses. Filled with subtle moments then ending with a crescendo the size of a meteor. Mortified by the prospect that Jack might be dead after he’s jabbed in the neck with a shard of glass. Simultaneously overwhelmed by Hannibal’s ‘guest,’ the mentally fragile Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl) pushing Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) out a two-story window – as we watched Alana paralyzed in pain, gasping for water filled breaths.

Hannibal season three gives us a new chapter to chew on. We begin with Lecter on the run in Europe, accompanied by his protégé psychiatrist Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson, The X-Files), sporting a new mission and a new identity. Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), Jack (Laurence Fishburne, The Matrix, CSI) and Alana (Caroline Dhavernas, Wonderfalls, The Pacific) don’t have a moment to recover from the events of the past season, finding themselves chasing the ghosts of their past.
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