Clarice

Gripping. ... Wisely, Breed underplays with a quiet intensity, projecting empathy and intelligence in her soft-spoken but firm resolve to be taken seriously. ... I miss Hannibal Lecter, but so far, Clarice is convincing me she's worthy of her own show. [15 - 28 Feb 2021, p.10]

Clarice is not going to rival the film that spawned it but on its own, low-stakes terms, it’s a damn sight better than expected, a show born from Silence that warrants plenty of conversation.

All the drama of this sharply written new tale is focused devotedly on Clarice, now portrayed with heart and intelligence by Rebecca Breeds.

There are enough ways this show could have gone wrong that it's worth celebrating how easy it makes it look to get the most important thing right. Clarice does Clarice proud.

An unusually well-made network procedural. ... “Clarice” is made with curiosity, confidence, and craft, and it comes as a happy surprise to say that it cares more about its protagonist’s mind than anyone else’s insides.

What we get is a nuanced portrait of trauma and survival.

The third episode is easily the best, a very strong hour that takes place almost entirely in a police station as Starling and her team again try to unpack a devious mind with new and varied interrogation techniques, unsure of the motives of the man to whom they’re speaking or even those around him. It’s an indication of how entertaining this show could be on a weekly basis

Aiding Clarice considerably is the performance of Australian actress Rebecca Breeds (Pretty Little Liars) as Starling. Breeds wisely patterns her diffident, even shy, Clarice after that of Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs, cloaking her intellectual capacity in bashful humility toward authority that sometimes cracks open to reveal repressed rage.

Somewhere, there’s an R-rated, CBS All Access version of Clarice that would almost certainly be a lot bolder and less constrained by what “works” for the CBS audience that gets this instead. We certainly get small tastes of what could be, especially when Breed’s performance is allowed to just give Starling the floor.

Based on the first three episodes, “Clarice” falls somewhere between “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Red Dragon” in the canon of Thomas Harris adaptations. It doesn’t have the operatic ambition of the NBC series “Hannibal,” but it’s certainly more intriguing than another “CSI” spinoff.

It’s a mix of good news and bad news, but the good news is the bad news gets better.

Breeds labors mightily in the role, but she is not quite convincing as a single-minded, self-abnegating workaholic who lives on ramen and orange soda. ... Much more compelling are the show’s supporting cast. ... The series is an appropriate sequel to The Silence Of The Lambs — and certainly a better one than the 2001 feature film Hannibal, which was less interested in those ideas. But in order to reach the artistic heights the Hannibal TV series did, Clarice will have to step out from Silence Of The Lambs’s shadow and stop trying so hard to ape Demme’s style.

Clarice is a slightly above-average CBS crime procedural, distinctive less for anything it does than for its associations with better, more famous material. The fact that the show works at all — and on some occasions, thanks mainly to Breeds, truly succeeds — is on one hand a relief, given how easy it would be to screw up this material.

Perhaps this third episode bodes well for continued improvement, but in the early going, “Clarice” is meh-see TV. It’s fine but surely there are better TV dramas to pair with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Starts promisingly enough but quickly fizzles over subsequent episodes. After a credible set-up drawing upon its origins, the show looks like a standard CBS crime procedural, and risks becoming a pretty flavorless dish.

There might be decent cop show beneath the layers of aggressive stylization. Writers are more willing to address racism than many similar network cop shows. ... But constantly linking it to the Hannibal story is a reach, undermining what makes the series unique. But through the mess of moths and unbearable moodiness, it's hard to see anything else.

“Clarice” is not aiming for the moon; it is aiming for — and achieves — CBS cop show. It’s a franchise in search of a purpose.

Through three episodes sent to critics, it's unclear whether this attempt to tell the story as a broadcast procedural with a full, serialized mystery arc will ever amount to anything more than a prehensile tail clinging to a beloved property. ... What keeps Clarice only slightly disappointing instead of infuriating is that Kurtzman, Lumet and Breed really do have a solid grasp on Clarice Starling as a character and even some thoughtful ideas about how the events of Silence of the Lambs impacted her.

The absence of Lecter and his indelible dynamic with Clarice leaves a huge void that Clarice struggles to fill. The result is a disappointingly run-of-the-mill procedural — another dark, grim Criminal Minds clone with a shiny brand name slapped on the front of it.

It's a promising-enough pilot, but unfortunately, Episode 2 all but abandons that story in favor of a new assignment that finds the VICAP team deployed to Tennessee, where the FBI is laying siege against a fringe militia group known as The Statesmen. Episode 2 is where the series really stumbles, as everything gets wrapped up in a neat bow replete with sappy music.

There is an interesting drama to be written about the future adventures of Agent Starling. Clarice (Alibi), unfortunately, isn’t it, but rather a by-numbers procedural.

It tells instead of shows, maybe because its visuals are consumed with the stylistic tics of network procedurals: a saturated color palette, recurring images slowed down to a nightmarish crawl, exterior shots so gloomy, they’re almost Stygian. This is storytelling that feels the need to constantly regain its audience’s attention after each commercial break. More troubling, though, is the show’s tenuous conception of its central character.

The three episodes provided for review mainly reveal a losing struggle against the past – not merely the character's but that of the franchise. ... [Breed's] efforts keep us from writing off "Clarice" entirely.

Frustratingly superficial psychological thriller.

For a show that is trying to be ambitious, it falls prey to far too many clichés, and an unrealistic glorification of Clarice.

From its supporting cast—with each character a particular type, per CBS’ “CSI” and “Criminal Minds” custom—to a main mystery that has all the blandness of a very special “Law and Order,” “Clarice” (which premieres on CBS on February 11) feels like a confluence of missed opportunities.

“Clarice” is a tiresome retread of the dramas that were created in its mothership’s image. It’s no better than most of its fellow post-“Silence” crime shows.

[There] are some potentially interesting threads to mine, but it’ll take much steadier, subtler hands than the ones that crafted these episodes to convincingly sew them together.

Everything about Clarice has been done, successfully and terribly and constantly, by a whole generation of CBS procedurals. ... I don't mind gross extremity, but Clarice wants shock value to cover up its sins against basic narrative sense.

Designed for maximum uninventiveness and lack of surprise, it’s formulaic comfort food that, in almost every respect, fails to satisfy.

The CBS drama is clearly copying whatever names and plot points it can onto its police procedural template, but it’s the disinterest in Clarice, the person, that proves unforgivable.