Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Rebecca Brands, Michael Culditz, Lucca De Oliveira, Nick Sandow, Devyn A. Tyler, Kal Penn, Jayne Atkinson, Maya McNair, Marnee Carpenter, Raoul Bhaneja, Derek Moran, Caitlin Robson, Douglas Smith, David Hewlett, K.C. Collins, Brian Bisson, Grace Lynn Kung, Caitlin Stryker, Simon Northwood, Will Conlon, Jen Richards.

The story is never complete.

What was once considered enough to wet the lips and stoke the appetite of the film lover and television watcher, has in recent years become a slot filler. The story has taken on a different direction with television leading the way, expanding a universe that perhaps had enough tension and pace in them to not require another tale being weaved into the original text.

The demand is that we want to know everything about a character, that we have this unseemly right to see more of their life without necessarily understanding what we are asking for; and whilst some might stand up to the pressure of comparison, might even thrive in the direct glare of the audience, it is unfortunate that Clarice will arguably not be counted amongst them. 

One of the great films of 1991, if not of that entire decade, came with the unnerving spectre of one of the most gentlemanly villains of all time, and one of the more downright fearsome creatures to be displayed on cinematic screens. Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of The Lambs, Buffalo Bill, and Clarice Starling are seared into the public conscious as much as Brit Pop, as the Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair, as any number of defining aspects of the decade, however the question remains, aside from Jodie Foster’s portrayal, except for the seething tension that filled every possible space between Ms. Foster and Dr. Lecter, portrayed with sublime physicality by Anthony Hopkins, was Clarice Starling the actual pinpoint of the film, was she the epicentre of the narrative, and therefore deserving of a series of her own.

Whilst Mads Mikkelsen excelled in the eponymous television series Hannibal, the room for the young Clarice Starling to be explored further was arguably not on the minds of many of the fans of the initial film, even, and with regret, the excellent Julianna Moore could barely ring any more out of the character when she took over from Jodie Foster in 2001’s Hannibal, and yet with honour, determination, and perhaps with a right to wrong, an apology in mind, to give back to the transgender community what they had implied, directly and implicitly made the audience observe in Buffalo Bill’s ritual killing, so the gap between the two films is filled; and it leaves no pleasure at all that for the most part it could have easily just have been ignored.

Whilst it was important to rectify a mistake, and with the class of Jen Richards being involved to accurately state the seismic error from 1991, Clarice simply didn’t have enough in it to be a fully-fledged series, and it is surely a case that there was only one actor who could fill the shoes of the novice F.B.I. agent Starling, and that was Ms. Foster herself.

Unlike many detective/procedural investigations that are brought to the small screen, the sense of mood never caught alight in this series, even the reveal was one that didn’t stoke the fire of tension and revulsion, for which surely the programme was aiming for; it became too self-involved, and whilst Clarice Starling is undeniably a hero, she is not, for the most part a central character to whom one would invest in.

Whilst the series led by example on the issue of transgender, and even marking the fall out of the original film by showing the complication and endured damage of the rescued Catherine Martin, in all other areas there was little to focus on, a consequence of adding depth where there was none to be found.

A disappointing series, one impenetrable to enlightenment, one determined to be made no matter the cost; and for that it does not deserve a further outing. 

Ian D. Hall