The Silence Of The Lambs Character Getting A Major Upgrade In Clarice

Clarice, CBS's fresh new look at the protagonist from The Silence of the Lambs, is well on its way, ramping up for a February 11 debut. Fans of Thomas Harris's series of books, as well as the panoply of films and television shows that they spawned, will no doubt be curious to see what this latest adaptation has in store.

Luckily, EW recently gave potential viewers a rundown of what's to come, and the scuttlebutt is funky. There's a lot to chew on. Thanks to ongoing murkiness over which character rights belong to which studio, a number of important players in the universe — including, notably, Hannibal Lecter — can't legally be utilized by the series. Executive producer Alex Kurtzman was quoted describing that particular limitation as a blessing, saying, "It's been quite liberating because we have no interest in writing about Hannibal," which might strike some fans as sour chianti.

Instead, the show looks set to explore some of the franchise's less celebrated occupants, with one character in particular getting some long overdue attention: Catherine Martin. Generally speaking, Martin's been thus far defined by her stalwart reluctance to put lotion on its skin, in spite of forthright guarantees on the part of her foil with regards to her odds of getting the hose again.

Yes, Catherine Martin, the last of Buffalo Bill's prospective victims, will play a significant role in the events of Clarice. Martin was last seen in-series being escorted out of Casa de Skinsuit at the end of Silence of the Lambs, her role as "victim in peril" well and truly wrapped up.

Clarice appears set to explore her character further, however, casting relative newcomer Marnee Carpenter as the former captive of Jame Gumb, Belvedere, Ohio's most avant-garde fashion designer. In her new role, Martin is described by Kurtzman as "a strange, fun-house-mirror version of Clarice." Her path will apparently mirror Starling's in some ways, as the EP continues, "They both shared this hell experience, but have been marked in different ways. Whereas Clarice is running from the fear and the pain, psychologically, Catherine is still in that well. So she is like a truth-teller."

Martin won't be the only one who made it out of Bill's basement, either, as Precious, the serial killer's beloved miniature poodle, will also return to the screen. In Clarice, Precious is adopted by Martin, and plays an important symbolic role in her recovery. "One of the ways in which Catherine has dealt with her trauma with Bill is that she has adopted Precious as her own dog -– the dog that represented torture, the dog that represented the killer, the dog that represented everything," Kurtzman says. 

Whether Kurtzman and company can make the non-Hannibal Lecter characters from the Hannibal mythos worthy of their own drama is still an open question, but it sure sounds like they're going to give it a try.