Luther vs Hannibal

Luther [BBC] vs Hannibal [NBC] - In character all round.

Round 1: Hannibal is active in London. He is nothing more than a respected psychiatrist. Luther has to catch the serial killer known as the Kensington cannibal. Hannibal wins via evasion or death, Luther wins via capture or death.

Round 2: Same as round 1, except Luther has access to Alice.

Round 3: Luther meets Hannibal who was a witness to a murder in his clinic. He is suspicious, Hannibal knows Luther suspects him of something, Luther knows he knows. A cat and mouse game ensues. Hannibal wins via evasion or death, Luther wins via capture or death.

Round 4: H2h in Hannibal's kitchen, various weapons around. Both bloodlusted, win by ko or death.

Round 5: Luther has caught Hannibal who is now in a psychiatric hospital. They have a conversation fraught with mind games. Who wins?

vs

@rogueshadow: what show is luther from, got any feats?

@strongarm:

Spoilers ahead:

@rogueshadow: seems like a good match for proctor

Hannibal typically does his stuff solo while Luther's always had help with his biggest problems, whether from Alice or Justin or whoever. The H2H round is an easy win for Luther, though --- the guy's strong enough to hold a man by just the foot and dangle him off a ledge.

Luther has the police force all rounds, at least to begin with, he'd probably end up having to get his hands dirty to stop Hannibal. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

He has limited control of the police force given that he answers to Schenk, so that doesn't really help if he can't get concrete proof that Hannibal is anything more than what he appears to be. Which is unlikely given Lecter's a lot more careful compared to someone like Alice.

Schenk is pretty lenient with him, he let him risk self immolation and Luther often undermines him [faking the fire to get onto his computer]. Also, Luther is a lot dirtier and has shown a much greater level of planning than anybody Hannibal has known e.g. setting up Frank Hodge, catching Lucian Burgess etc and that includes Hannibal himself, who has shown himself to be more of an opportunist than a planner, though he does excels at psychological manipulation in the long and short term, I don' think that will be useful in anything but round 5.

Alice was annoying, one minute she was a cold, calculating prodigy, the next she was blowing holes in Ian.

Have you seen the clip from season 2 of Hannibal fighting?

Schenk let him risk self-immolation because it was a desperate situation with a mad suicide bomber and his demands. Not really comparable to trying to allocate police resources to an investigation without sufficient cause. Undermining Schenk in ways that are immaterial to the point at hand doesn't help --- fudging records by sneaking onto Schenk's computer isn't going to give him the backing of the police force unless Schenk authorizes it. I don't see how Luther stuffing a corpse in Frank Hodge's trunk displays a greater level of planning than Lecter driving Graham out of his mind and tricking the FBI into locking him up in a facility for the criminally insane. Lucien Burgess was a decidedly unsubtle sort of serial killer. Hannibal keeps a list of people to kill, places to kill them at, ways to kill them, cook them, and dispose of the bodies by serving them to his dinner guests. How is that not planning? It's literally the opposite of opportunism.

Yeah, thinking back, I though I remembered that there was more to Hodge's capture, I haven't watched it in a while.

Schenk let Luther get away with all sorts, plus, you're acting as though Luther doesn't have resources, if he goes to Schenk for manpower, he'll probably get it, what kind of resources are you referring to out of curiosity? I don't really see what he would need that he doesn't already have. Hell Ian was capable of getting tactical aid units for a rogue policeman, imagine a cannibalistic serial killer loose in London, they'd be down on it like a ton of bricks.

I mentioned his psychological manipulation, but that doesn't help him for most rounds. You seem to downplay Lucien Burgess quite a bit, he managed to become a celebrity via his crimes and remain uncaught for twenty years, even subdue and trick the police officer who was sent undercover to catch him. He showed just as much proficiency in the actual murders as Hannibal has.

If we go through the motions of some of Luther's plans, he's pretty smart.

• Luther found the girl's body, but did not report it so that he could trick Lucien into thinking that he was going to plant DNA by taking blood, then had Ian phone him to think he was going to help him and where to be etc, when he arrived Luther revealed it was all a rouse in order to get him where he wanted him doing what he waned him to do.
• Another good example of prep was with Ian, getting him away from the locker rooms via staging a meet, having Mark take the diamonds so Ian would follow him via trackers on the diamonds, [he knew Ian would have had them on trackers] all to get a confession.
• Not a long term thing, but I like the finale, where he chooses Mary over Alice, knowing that Mary will try to save Alice, whereas Alice would just let Mary die, the balance of probability dictates that would garner a better chance of them both surviving. It just shows his overall intellectual ability on the fly.

That's better planning than anything Hannibal's done outside of psychological manipulation e.g. planting in Jack's mind the feeing of failure over Miriam Lass so that he would readily accept Will's incarceration as his failure again, Hannibal's forte is psychological manipulation, which is impressive, but ony provide a strong advantage for rounds 5 and 3.

I just feel that Luther's a better planner, not psychologically, but in terms of practical manipulation. I'm not saying I think he'd necessarily catch Hannibal though.

Also, on a side note, I thought the list of cards were people he had killed, not was planning on killing, he took that life insurance guys card because he was just about to kill him. They were trophies. Or am I misconstruing it?

Bump.