Clarice has dinner with a fellow Buffalo Bill victim and Ardelia discovers corruption within the Bureau.

Clarice’s mid-season break has given us the opportunity to breathe again after a superb fifth episode. The eponymous agent has been debriefed after her near-death experience at the psychiatric hospital, desperately trying to remember the face of the man she scratched. The trouble is, the DNA evidence from under her fingernails is revealing nothing, which immediately sets fellow agent Ardelia Mapp’s spider-sense tingling.

Elsewhere, Krendler is setting up divorce proceedings with his lawyer Joe Hudlin (I feel we’ll be seeing more of him, for good reasons) and Clarice has been invited to Ruth Martin’s house for dinner. Clarice has been ignoring daughter Catherine’s calls, asking for help, presumably because she is struggling enough with her flashbacks to Buffalo Bill’s lair and her self-doubt in what she could have seen in what would have been total darkness.

But the real strength of this episode is in the power play between the three females. Every one of them has suffered and/or benefitted from the time in the serial killer’s home. For some it has provided fame or promotion, while on the flip side it has led to anxieties around food and paranoia. Each of the characters plays this perfectly, sniping at one another, while recognising that this trio are now so interlinked that they cannot separate themselves from the legacy fallout of Jame Gumb’s deeds.

Verdict: Wasting no time in picking up the momentum again after its brief break, Clarice is straight back on the case, with a killer ending to carry us towards the final act of this opening season. 8/10

Nick Joy