I Watch TV: Clarice

Clarice

This TV show is a direct sequel to The Silence Of The Lambs (1991). In the climax of the film Clarice Starling, rookie FBI agent, rescues Katherine, the daughter of US Senator Ruth Martin, from serial killer Jame Gumb aka Buffalo Bill. One year later Ruth Martin is now Attorney General and recruits Starling for her new serial killer hunting unit.

Politics! Martin has got appointed on a hunt-serial-killers stop-violence-to-women platform, and so wants the monstrous things being done to the dead women the FBI find to be done by weirdo psychopaths. This turns around when it turns out there’s actually a reason that some of the victims they find are being killed. Worse still the people behind it are politically connected.

Personal problems! The entire task force is haunted by things. Starling has PTSD from her time in Jaime Gumb’s murder dungeon. But not as bad as Katherine. And Ruth Martin is trying to get the two of them to connect to help Katherine. Starling has daddy issues – that’s a huge part of Silence Of The Lambs – but doesn’t actually have a surrogate daddy in this*. But surrogate daddies are a thing. A weird, grotesque and literalised thing.

Bureaucracy! The 90s FBI is kind of sexist and textually racist. There’s an ongoing subplot in which Starling’s black best friend and roommate, Ardelia Mapp, is stuck doing cold case DNA stuff, helps make several breakthroughs and then has a white male guy put in charge of the project. Who she has to train on it! There’s a lot of desk work as well. But also…

Intrigue! This is where politics and bureaucracy coalesce as people work behind the scenes and outside normal channels to get things done that other people don’t want done.

Anyway although I watched it all the way through I don’t feel strongly about it. There were some gruesome and grotesque scenes but not many and nothing special for a serial killer hunting show. I don’t find the 90s an especially exciting period despite (because of?) having lived through it, and with a lot of scenes in the dim FBI offices – possibly because of Covid restrictions? – it was hardly distinct. And Starling is a cool protagonist, but we’ve seen her before, she’s better in The Silence Of The Lambs and there have been versions of her on other TV shows, so new-OG Starling doesn't really impress.

Watch This: Some convoluted serial killer stuff
Don’t Watch This: It’s just convoluted serial killer stuff

* The two surrogate daddies who manipulate Starling in the film, FBI Agent Jack Crawford and Serial Killer Hannibal Lecter, were placed in their own spin-off TV series, Hannibal, which substantially remixed the events in the film(s) (and also the bits of this TV series that already existed)