Hannibal Lecter Meets Patrick Jane In This 10-Season Crime Thriller Masterpiece

Image courtesy of MovieStillsDb Published Aug 24, 2026, 4:02 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. Sign in to your ScreenRant account While mixing The Silence of the Lambs and The Mentalist might sound like a weird idea, one 10-season crime thriller proves this was an ingenious choice. The idea of former career criminals working with the police to catch even bigger fish is not a new one by any means. Shows like the thrilling procedural White Collar based their entire stories around this practice, while Netflix’s far darker psychological thriller Mindhunter explored the early years of criminal psychologists interviewing notorious real-life serial killers to unearth their motivations. However, as the above summary implies, how this trope plays out depends heavily on the tone of the show. In Mindhunter or the 1990 classic The Silence of the Lambs, the criminals who aid the police are legitimately threatening, terrifying figures, and viewers are left unnerved by the possibility that they could be misleading or manipulating the cops for their own twisted purposes. In shows like White Collar, the criminals are practically antiheroes themselves, and viewers are left rooting for them to redeem themselves. What made the 10-season crime classic The Blacklist a cult hit was the show’s ability to blend both of these approaches in the same series. The Blacklist stars Sex, Lies, & Videotape star James Spader as the unctuous super-criminal Raymond Reddington, an infamous villain who works with the FBI to track down the fellow criminals on his eponymous blacklist. Of course, as the existence of the list implies, Reddington has his own motivations for hunting these fugitives, and the show never shies away from his moral ambiguity. The Blacklist Combined The Silence of the Lambs’ Criminal Antihero With The Mentalist’s Premise The earlier CBS procedural The Mentalist starred future Scarpetta star Simon Baker as Patrick Jane, a slick fake psychic who used his very real powers of deduction to apprehend criminals for the California Bureau of Investigation, but pretended that it was his imaginary abilities as a medium that allowed him to solve these cases. If this setup sounds familiar, that’s likely because the goofier, more playful USA Network hit Psych offered a comedic spin on the same idea two years earlier. While Psych was an outright comedy, The Mentalist was a darker, more straightforwardly self-serious police procedural where Baker’s Jane was haunted by a serial killer who evaded him, the elusive Red John. However, as dark as The Mentalist was in comparison to Psych, the show couldn’t compare to the amoral bleakness of The Blacklist. Throughout the show’s ten seasons and 218 episodes, The Blacklist featured more torture, murder, corruption, and criminality than The Mentalist ever managed, and half of these crimes were committed by the show’s ostensible heroes. The Blacklist’s Franchise Success Proves Its Premise Is Irresistible Credit: MovieStillsDB While the lone spinoff show from the series, The Blacklist: Redemption, lasted only one season, the show’s franchise still had a surprisingly strong half life. There are The Blacklist tie-in novels, a comic book series, and a video game, making the show an even bigger long-running cult crime procedural than The BBC’s Death in Paradise franchise in terms of sheer output. While this is undeniably impressive, it likely won’t come as a surprise to long-term observers of the crime drama genre. Ever since the premise was first explored in 1986’s Manhunter and later expanded on by 1990's award-winning The Silence of the Lambs, viewers have never gotten sick of the conceit of a criminal helping the cops get inside the twisted minds of other villains. From the three-season masterpiece Hannibal to Criminal Minds, from White Collar to The Blacklist, audiences are always intrigued by a villain who is willing to help the cops for his own shady purposes. As such, it should come as no surprise that The Blacklist’s blend of The Mentalist and The Silence of the Lambs succeeded. Release Date 2013 - 2023-00-00 Network NBC Showrunner Jon Bokenkamp Cast Diego Klattenhoff Donald Ressler Directors Andrew McCarthy, Michael W. Watkins, Bill Roe, John Terlesky, Donald E. Thorin Jr., Christine Moore, Kurt Kuenne, Terrence O'Hara, Adam Weisinger, Mahesh Pailoor, Karen Gaviola, Stephanie A. Marquardt, Steven A. Adelson, Daniel Willis, Matthew McLoota, Bethany Rooney, Joe Carnahan, Paul A. Edwards, Alex Zakrzewski, David Platt, Jean de Segonzac, Jono Oliver, Michael Zinberg, Paul Holahan Writers Jonathan Shapiro, Kelli Johnson, Brandon Margolis, Daniel Knauf, Dawn DeNoon, Aiah Samba, Dave Metzger, Justine Neubarth, Dave Thomas, Kim Newton, Vincent Angell, David Merritt II, Chap Taylor, Daniel Voll, Elizabeth Benjamin, John Zinman, Wendy West, Anthony Sparks, Jim Campolongo, Kristen Reidel