I don't do commentaries on films because A) I'm not very good at it and B) it's an odd thing that I discovered, on my first film, that you go through this really intense experience of making a film and then you sit in a little room with a monitor and you reduce the thing to a bunch of silly anecdotes. It's really unfulfilling and I've never really enjoyed listening to them anyway, so I just don't do them.

As the director, you're meant to be critical and you are, so there are loads of things. But the thing is, the way I look at it is, to try to get some measure of success, it's dangerous to look at financial or critical success, or positive response as a measure.

With a DVD, you want something you can own, you can watch, you can come to grips with and you can explore. It's something larger than the film, when it's going out to a fan base.

It's good to know where you've come from.

I've always been very, very supportive of fan cultures. I'm a fan of all kinds of things.

Mads has a terrifying subtlety and as the episodes go on, you start seeing the way a person can command other people by doing practically nothing and terrifying the sh*t out of you. He is the most astonishingly subtle performer with the most incredibly keen sense of what his face can do and how his words can form. He has a mission. Nothing is by chance. I truly believe as long as we have success in seasons that Mads will become the defining face of Hannibal Lecter.

As a director, you have to go in with a really, really, really clear picture of what you want. That's the point of my commentaries. It's so difficult because you're the harshest critic.