Pilot Review: Clarice

 Clarice (Thursdays at 10:00pm on CBS)

I'm one of the few who hated the little I saw of NBC's cult favorite Hannibal, so I had low expectations of another small-screen adaptation of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter series (especially one that is seeming to bypass the famous doctor altogether). The Silence of the Lambs remains a gold standard of film-making in the horror and crime genres, and its gritty noir influence is still felt in film and television three decades later. So yeah, rather than just copying the style, why not return to the source material? If CBS's Clarice is the answer that question, it's because there's no matching the original.

If it's been a while since you've seen The Silence of the Lambs, don't worry. The opening scene of Clarice makes sure to recap what you missed: Clarice Starling, fledgling FBI trainee, solved the case of a disturbing serial killer named Buffalo Bill, who murders and then skins women to make clothes out of them. In the process, she saved his latest victim, Catherine Martin, the daughter of a US senator. All of this came with the help of a dangerous psychopath (whose name is curiously never mentioned - a rights issue, perhaps?). All of this exposition plays out in the form of mandated therapy a year after the events of Jonathan Demme's film, placing us in 1993. Starling is soon pulled from therapy and flown to DC, much to her disappointment considering how much she enjoys working in the windowless bowels of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, at the express request of now-Attorney General Ruth Martin (Jayne Atkinson, House of Cards). There's a potential new serial killer on the loose, and Martin wants Starling's help. So she's thrown back to the wolves to prove herself as an adept profiler and investigator and not just a lucky beginner.

My main issue with Clarice is simply that it exists. I don't mean that it shouldn't but rather that it does not need to, because its very existence is the reason it is never going to be great. The specter of Jonathan Demme's iconic 1991 film, and especially of Jodie Foster's Academy Award-winning performance as Clarice, looms over every moment of Clarice's pilot. It's impossible to watch the show and not compare it to its predecessor(s), and while Clarice acquits itself well compared to, say, the abominable 2001 sequel Hannibal, it pales in comparison to every aspect of The Silence of the Lambs. It doesn't help that director Maja Vrvilo (Picard) makes many choices that directly correlate to the film: the buzzing sound of a camera's flash, dreams filled with flying moths, the POV-in-the-dark as the killer is hunted at the climax, etc. When I said earlier that the style of Demme's film is still replicated or paid tribute to, that is quite literally the case in this pilot; unfortunately, it's too much to ask a broadcast network pilot to live up to one of the best-known psychological thrillers of all time.

That burden is heavy on Australian actress Rebecca Breeds (The Originals), who is given very little to distinguish her take on Clarice Starling from Foster's. Breeds probably has the hardest task of anyone, seeing as how Foster's take on Clarice has been ranked by the American Film Institute as the greatest heroine in film history. Breeds is left, then, not to try and create her own take on this character but to mimic the easiest parts of Foster's performance: the West Virginian drawl, the breathiness and hushed tones, the clenched jaw. Obviously the character needs to hew near Foster's, since this is a direct sequel taking place a year after the events of Lambs, but it sometimes feels like Breeds was cast simply because she can imitate Foster and resembles her at certain angles.

It's not entirely Breeds' fault, though. I don't know how a show like Clarice could really be successful. Setting it so soon after the film, which means Clarice is now a period piece, is a detriment because it means we're now forced to compare this new series to the movie side-by-side. There's no divorcing the two projects. Introducing other characters from Lambs further forces comparison, as we're now not just following Clarice as she moves on to new cases, we're also revisiting the trauma Buffalo Bill caused to Catherine and Ruth Martin. That's a nice narrative move, exploring the perspectives of women as survivors rather simply as victims, but it doesn't help to establish Clarice as its own thing.

How could creators Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet (who together wrote the 2017 The Mummy reboot) have fixed this? Like I said, I don't know. Set it in the present? Then Clarice would either be nearing retirement age, or they'd have to do some retconning of Lambs having occurred more recently. Set it sometime between Lambs and now? That's what Hannibal did, and that didn't turn out so well (and it may have then invited comparison to the 2001 film, rather than the 1991 film). Set it soon after but divorce Clarice from the events and/or characters of the film? This would solve some problems, but not all of them.

This is all to say that no matter how it was approached, the whole idea of Clarice just isn't a winner for me. As a lower-quality sibling to The Silence of the Lambs, some may find it interesting or nostalgic enough to keep watching. As a procedural with a strong female lead, it's not as unique a concept as it was in the early 90s, but it can feel easy and comforting for viewers who enjoy these types of shows. But as a direct descendant of one of the best films ever made, particularly within its genre, Clarice is as lifeless as the bodies Starling studies at crime scenes.