Clarice

Starring: Rebecca Breeds, Michael Cudlitz, Lucca De Oliveira, Kal Penn, Nick Sandow, Devyn A. Taylor, Marnee Carpenter

 Seasons: 1 (2021) - Network: CBS - Rating: 4 Stars

Clarice is or rather was a mind-bending thriller that told the tale of Special Agent Clarice Starling's life in between the events of Silence of The Lambs and Hannibal. It was only on the air for a short time, because you didn't watch it! Why didn't people watch it, three reasons. One, it doesn't feature Hannibal Lechter in any way (input collective groan here). Two, it was continuous, rather than episonic, meaning the season followed a single story, rather than having Clarice do battle with a different psychopath every week. and Three, the producers of the film did a series about Hannibal Lechter a few years back, that was weird, confusing, and basically awful, but they weren't the ones behind Clarice. Clarice was the brain child of Star Trek producer, Alex Kurtzman, and for all intense and purposes, it was Silence of The Lambs. Everything from the location headers to the music and lighting were exactly the same. The story literally takes place weeks after the incident with Buffalo Bill, and had it been successful, would have finished with the events leading up to Hannibal. 

The story begins with Clarice (Rebecca Breeds) being assigned to join a new task force, created by now Attorney General, Ruth Martin. Many believe that the young agent isn't ready to be part of such a high profile task force, and she's only there because she saved the A.G.'s daughter. Their first case is to investigate the discovery of three woman found brutally murdered and dumped in a local river. The lead agent of the task force, Paul Krendler (Michael Cudlitz) sees the case as straight forward, there is another psychopath on the loose, but Clarice disagrees and goes off on her own to investigate. 

This show has serious Silence of The Lambs vibes. The producers have gone to great lengths to make everything specific to the time period and film, even Rebecca Breeds, the actress who plays Clarice, looks like Jodie Foster and has a similar accent. As for the story, it obviously had to be toned down somewhat for network television, but it is every bit as chilling, mind-bending, and creepy as the film was. At first, I had my doubts, because after all wasn't this series completely about Hannibal? One would think so, until seeing this show. Similar to the Netflix series, Mindhunter, the focus of Clarice is on the profilers and the people who hunt serial killers, the only difference being, that they are actively hunting killers. 

I loved this series, from character development to a story that turned out to be much more complex that it originally looked. In my opinion Clarice was a better sequel to Silence of The Lambs than Hannibal was. Odd when you consider the fact that Hannibal Lechter plays no part in it. Rebecca Breeds leaves her soap opera life behind and has a career defining role. It's too bad she was only a kid when Hannibal was made, because I'd take her over Julianne Moore in a heartbeat. The story was great, the cast was excellent, I really would have loved to see where the series went, and learned more about how Clarice went from being the wide eye naive agent to the jaded woman she became in the sequel, but as is often the case with network television, I guess I'll never know.