‘Clarice’ can’t refer to Hannibal Lecter – but maybe it’s for the best

With CBS debuts Clarice Thursday evening – and the 30th anniversary of Thesilenceofthelambs arriving three days later –The ring spend a day celebrating Hannibal Lecter and his strangely intoxicating world.

Clarice waste no time approaching the elephant in the room. The new CBS series, sequel to that of Thomas Harris The Thesilenceofthelambs, opens with FBI agent Clarice Starling (played by Rebecca Breeds) in a therapy session a year after arresting serial killer Buffalo Bill. The back-and-forth sequence of close-ups of Clarice and the therapist would inevitably have drawn comparisons to the film adaptation of Oscar-winning Jonathan Demme, even though the series did not. also Use quick flashbacks from Clarice and Bill and poorly rendered CGI butterflies. But at the same time Clarice brazenly cosplays a great horror movie of all time he can’t even let go Silencethe most durable figure. The infamous Hannibal Lecter is relegated to a throwaway line about how Clarice’s former therapist “ate her patients”, before she clarified that their relationship was a “quid pro quo.” That’s all. Maybe the lambs finally stopped screaming, but I’m about to do it.

The premise in the universe of Clarice is that the rookie agent gained instant fame thanks to the Buffalo Bill affair, and that the FBI is more focused on his rise than on finding the cannibalistic serial killer who is canonically still at large. (Lecter not being behind bars seems like this should be an urgent matter for those in the office, just my opinion!) ClariceThe decision to omit all explicit mentions of Lecter, however, is not a stylistic choice, but rather due to a bizarre and convoluted legal issue: the rights to the characters in Harris’ books are shared between MGM and the Dino De company. Laurentiis. The easiest way to understand the split is if any character who didn’t appear on NBC Hannibal (i.e., Clarice, Buffalo Bill, Ardelia Mapp, Paul Krendler) is fair play for the CBS show, while the rest is off limits.

It’s a difficult space for Clarice to navigate – the absence of Lecter’s name ends up drawing more attention to the bizarre twist of the situation. But there is a world in which the vacuum left by Lecter could have been for the best: The serial killer has already been memorably portrayed in film and television by Anthony Hopkins and Mads Mikkelsen, respectively, and whenever ‘such an indelible character takes center stage, he tends to devour everything around him. (Often, uh, literally.) Clarice Starling, meanwhile, hasn’t had a fair shake since Jodie Foster’s exemplary take on the character in the 1991 adaptation of Demme. (The less said about the portrayal of Julianne Moore in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, the better.) With the CBS series established in 1993, Clarice still navigates male-dominated workplaces, and she does not have access to a cell phone, which has become a cheat code tracking serial killer. There could have been some interesting material to explore, despite this stupid legal minefield on a name.

But the most glaring aspect of Clarice isn’t this a Lecterverse show without its most iconic killer. It’s that he doesn’t want to focus on tracking down serial killers to begin with. The first three episodes of the series set up a serialized arc of mystery – with a second episode of Detour to a Waco-esque dead end in the Appalachians – that initially appears to confirm that there is a new serial killer maiming women. around the Beltway. But soon Clarice deduces that the murders are meant to cover up (minor spoiler alert) an old drug trial gone awry, and she has to focus on some sort of nebulous, far-reaching plot that has nothing to do with it. a rogue psychopathic mind. The first impressions are that the Clarice the brain trust was inspired more by the misdeeds of, say, Amazon companies Back home only by the themes and the execution that made Silence such a cultural phenomenon.

“We’re looking not to repeat what Demme did, because I think the biggest mistake we could make would be to mirror the style of that,” said co-creator Alex Kurtzman. Weekly entertainment in December, explaining why ClariceThe first season will not have a “traditional” killer. Without taking into account the fact that Clarice recreates images and scenes from Demme’s adaptation in recurring flashbacks, which undermine Kurtzman’s own flawed logic, that mindset turns the show into the kind of generic criminal proceeding that television is known for. Instead of aiming for NBC’s baroque surrealism Hannibal or the sullen charm of Mindhunter, Clarice lukewarmly aspires to be next Criminal minds.

Now there is nothing wrong with Criminal minds—It lasted 15 seasons on CBS for a reason – but such a frozen frame is contrary to what made the Lecterverse so appealing. (Also, even Criminal minds featured more than its fair share of serial killers!) If the Clarice the brain trust can’t legally mention Hannibal Lecter by name and doesn’t want its main character to hunt down serial killers, why not just… create standard criminal proceedings without these inordinate expectations? The answer is, of course, that such a familiar setup paired with a flashy IP address is likely to attract more viewers. But for anyone who loved Demme’s movie and Bryan Fuller’s NBC series, the novelty of an actress mimicking Jodie Foster’s West Virginia accent wears off after a few minutes. All that’s left is something that even the Lecterverse’s worst entries have avoided becoming: a terribly lackluster project.

What else, Clarice can’t even hit the low bar of accurately portraying Harris’ characters. Clarice’s boss in the FBI’s violent criminal apprehension program, Paul Krendler (Michael Cudlitz), is initially portrayed as a foil: an authority figure undermining and sacking his subordinate at every turn. Three episodes, however, it becomes evident that Krendler is softening his stance on Clarice, as the two evolve towards mutual understanding and respect. That’s fine, but that was never Harris’ intention. For a more faithful interpretation of Krendler, consider the portrayal of Ray Liotta in the Hannibal film adaptation – someone so disgusting that he can’t help but make sarcastic remarks about Clarice being a white trash, even while Lecter feeds the dude his own brain.

TV TV was always going to be a tough choice for a faithful reimagining of Harris’ work – Fuller’s macabre beauty and sheer WTF-ery Hannibal In fact, broadcasting for three seasons on NBC feels more like a miracle every year. But loyalty, it seems, is not Claricemodus operandi of. Instead, the show wants Trojan horse viewers to expect another thrilling expansion of a wonderfully gruesome book series to watch a bland CBS procedure. In retrospect, it’s a relief that Clarice was not allowed to get hold of Hannibal Lecter and defile the good doctor’s name.