In 1991, The Silence of the Lambs was a movie seen through Clarice Starling’s eyes. Her life, experiences, hopes, and fears, all while being surrounded by the worst kind of human beings. We now have a CBS series simply named Clarice that, while still focusing on the character, picks up a year after the events of The Silence of the Lambs to see how Clarice is coping in life, personally and professionally.
Understandably, Clarice (Rebecca Breeds) is struggling, as she talks with an FBI-appointed therapist in the first scene. There are things she has yet to fully process, things she has internalized, but the therapist, and many others, continue to underestimate her. Still, the issues Clarice is dealing with are rather large and while therapy might not be the answer for her, (she profiles the therapist out of instinct and habit) she is damaged and needs to address it.
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Clarice is now played by Rebecca Breeds, who does an admirable job with a character we know all too well. She plays the tortured soul, and at the same time shows off her skills while trying to keep her demons under wraps. A great deal of the series’ success will rest with Breeds, so it was good to see she is up to the challenge.
In the middle of a therapy session, Clarice is called away by a familiar face and before you can say “serial killer,” she is back in the thick of the horrors she left behind. Her immediate supervisor in the field is Paul Krendler (Michael Cudlitz) who is not impressed with her skills and thinks she got lucky catching Buffalo Bill. The rest of the team is skeptical except for Tomas Esquivel (Lucca De Oliveira) who seems to understand Clarice sees things a little differently than everyone else.
As pilots go, “The Silence is Over” did its job. However, there are some issues that need to sort themselves out. Clarice is being touted as a psychological police drama, but it needs to separate itself from similar shows. You will only be able to ride the coattails of Clarice Starling’s name for a while, and Cudiltz and company are pretty cookie-cutter in terms of on-screen FBI agents. The show will have to work hard to carve out its own identity and it remains to be seen if they can accomplish that.
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There will be the inevitable comparisons to the 2013 NBC TV series Hannibal, which bathed itself in grotesque and erotic visuals. This is not that kind of show, and honestly, there is no way CBS is going to get away with the blood-soaked violence that Hannibal did, so there is no sense in even trying to go there. Also, legally, they cannot even mention our favorite cannibal so that will be quite a challenge to overcome, seeing as he shaped so much of Clarice’s life.
Visually, the episode looked polished and it moved at a nice pace. It did not overdo the procedural parts and focused more on Clarice, which they should do, but that in itself could be a problem if Breeds continues to be so much better than everyone else. To be fair, this was only the pilot, so I’m hoping this will sort itself out as the season progresses.
While Clarice may not reinvent the wheel, “The Silence is Over” did set the stage. With Breeds doing a solid job as Clarice, there is hope for this series. It remains to be seen if it can move away from familiar formulas and give us something truly interesting, not simply falling back on the character’s history to try and carry the show.
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