It has taken decades, but Patricia Cornwell’s iconic literary character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, has finally been brought to life. Nicole Kidman takes on the role of the unrelenting chief medical examiner trying to prove that the case that made her career wasn’t based on misinformation. Scarpetta is more than your average crime drama, it’s a layered portrayal of the psychology of detective work and how the pursuit of justice can be a dangerous one.
Kay (Kidman) and her FBI criminal profiler husband, Benton Wesley (Simon Baker), move back to Virginia after she is asked to solve a series of gruesome murders reminiscent of those which launched her career. The show follows two timelines, switching between the current day and the case that made the medical examiner, based on both Cornwell’s first Scarpetta novel, 1990’s award-winning Postmortem, and 2020’s Autopsy. She becomes terrified that this new case could topple the evidence found in the first spout of crimes and ruin her career and reputation.
Scarpetta is a show about solving a murder, but the crime isn’t the central focus. The eight episodes are more focused on the twisted web of family relationships as the murders and Kay’s homelife intertwine. She’s joined at work by her brother-in-law, Pete Marino, a homicide detective who worked with Kay for decades, all while trying to maintain a relationship with her bohemian sister, Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis). The work also drives a wedge between Kay and her husband, who isn’t necessarily being honest with his spouse about the case. Family is complicated enough without a decades old murder case causing a rift between siblings.
All temporarily living in a big house together, the best moments of Scarpetta come when the show is dissecting the family dynamic. Along with the two sisters is Dorothy’s tech-genius daughter, Lucy (Ariana DeBose), who also formerly worked with Kay at the FBI. She is the shell of her former self, now spending her days talking to a realistic AI program of her deceased wife, Janet (Janey Montgomery).
Kay and Dorothy witnessed their father’s murder as young girls, an event that put the two women on very different paths in life. It also significantly altered how the pair handles death and family. Dramas love to give their heroines tragic back stories, but Scarpetta fully explores how the never-ending echoes of trauma shape a life. The show spends enough time in their childhood to help the audience understand who they are without lingering for too long away from the main storylines.
There are enough shows on TV that exclusively follow a crime scene from murder to imprisonment, but very few put emphasis on the psychological impact the work can have on a person and their world around them. This show is much closer to a family drama like Big Little Lies than a CSI or Silent Witness. It’s a marvel that the creator and writer, Liz Sarnoff (Lost, Deadwood, and Barry), manages to balance the timeline switches and the tonal jumps so expertly. The laughs never feel insulting to the serious points, the eccentric characters feel real enough to be part of Kay’s world and the switch in timelines don’t remove the audience from the action.
Fans of gory crime, fear not, Scarpetta doesn’t shy away from Kay’s work in forensics. Bodies are chopped up, diced, and inspected in all their gruesome detail. It helps that the series is directed by David Gordon Green (Halloween Kills) and produced by horror maestro Jason Blum (Get Out, The Black Phone, M3gan). The murder plot is genuinely fascinating, twisting and turning in ways even the most avid whodunnit viewers won’t imagine. Sure, the pacing in the middle episodes struggles, as it drags out the whodunnit and adds some unnecessary last-minute red herrings. Still, the last episode delivers a punch-in-the-face reveal and thankfully wraps up both timeline mysteries enough to satisfy viewers.
Scarpetta is also elevated from your usual streaming fare thanks to the cast of performers at the top of their game. Nicole Kidman isn’t delving into anything new, reusing the complicated ice queen persona she has been perfecting for the last decade or so. Jamie Lee Curtis once again chews scenery as the alcoholic, party girl, Dorothy, but her larger-than-life performance style works for this type of character. Bobby Cannavale is the straight man to Curtis’ wildness, balancing out the women and their fraught relationship. Their chemistry holds together some of the plot’s more eccentric moments. Simon Baker’s Benton is the odd one out, a one-dimensional character who you never really get to know or care about.
Ariana DeBose proves why she won that Academy Award for West Side Story, as a grieving widow who can’t let say goodbye. AI Janet acts as a sounding board for all the characters, who speak to her as if she were their therapist. While it’s a plot thread that stands out and doesn’t entirely fit the entire tone of the show, it’s where much of the show’s heart comes from.
The extraordinary cast comes from the younger counterparts, who eerily mimic the older versions of their characters. British actress Rose McEwan is uncanny in her mimicking of Nicole Kidman’s mannerisms, even down to her deep voice and not-quite-American accent. Amanda Righetti plays the younger Dorothy, a performance not easy to replicate, but she manages. Casting Bobby’s lookalike son, Jake Cannavale, is genius but also terrifying, as he looks and acts so much like his father.
Scarpetta is a masterclass in balance. Part family soap opera and part crime drama, the series manages to never make one part feel more important than the others. With another 27 books in Cromwell’s series to adapt, we could hopefully have many more years of Nicole Kidman’s forensic pathologist and her eccentric family dynamics.
Scarpetta launched on Prime Video on 11th March.
Learn more about the show at the official site for the title.
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