One of the major questions surrounding Clarice was whether or not The Silence of the Lambs sequel series would be able to put a fresh or even halfway interesting spin on the small screen procedural, a form of television that’s been done to death a thousand times over, or if it would just rely on its connections to a popular brand and hope that would be enough to find a big audience.
It looks as though the answer falls somewhere in the middle, after early figures have revealed that CBS’ latest high profile show drew in four million viewers for the premiere, which is solid if a little underwhelming given that the network shelled out a small fortune for a Super Bowl spot, one that heavily played up the connections to the world of Hannibal Lecter while conveniently overlooking the fact that Clarice can’t even mention him by name.
The bad news is that critics have not been impressed by the first three episodes made available for review, with Clarice currently sitting on a Rotten Tomatoes score of 33%. Another interesting thing to note is that it pulled in less viewers than the premiere of Hannibal did in the same time slot on NBC eight years ago, and the numbers gradually dropped throughout the first season of Bryan Fuller’s acclaimed thriller to under two million by the thirteenth and final episode of the run.
CBS will be hopeful that Clarice‘s ratings don’t crater over the coming weeks, but based on the consensus, it doesn’t seem as though it has much to offer other than an impressive central performance from Rebecca Breeds and some loose connections to the classic feature film that turned the title heroine into a household name.
Published: Feb 13, 2021 12:53 pm