Clarice Review: CBS's Haunting Silence of the Lambs Spin-Off Does Clarice Starling Proud The new series is interested in its hero as a person, not a pop culture legacy Kelly Connolly Rebecca Breeds, Clarice Brooke Palmer/CBS Clarice Starling needs no introduction. She's the kind of groundbreaking character whose TV series can be sold with one name. Clarice. Like Cher. The new CBS procedural, set a year after the events of The Silence of the Lambs, presumes that Clarice Starling is now famous in her world, too: She's the woman who took down Buffalo Bill — and tangoed with Hannibal Lecter, though you won't hear Hannibal mentioned by name in the series. There's a legal explanation for his absence from this story (the rights to author Thomas Harris' characters are confusingly divided), but it's a gift for the show: It keeps the focus on Clarice. She's the only celebrity this show needs. Her FBI therapist refers to Hannibal obliquely as her "last therapist"; he was fascinated with trying to get inside her head. Now, the new series is carrying on his work without him.