Scarpetta Review: Even Nicole Kidman Can't Save This Clunky Detective Series

It's a shame that "Scarpetta," Nicole Kidman's latest project to feature her in a strawberry-blonde wig, feels so familiar, because its source material helped shape the true-crime genre as we know it. Patricia Cornwell's first crime novel featuring medical examiner and forensics expert Kay Scarpetta, titled "Postmortem," released in 1990. But unfortunately, in 2026, we get this — and by "this," I mean a clumsy, exposition-laden procedural clearly meant for "second screen viewing," wherein every single character constantly repeats themselves or says what they're doing so you can comfortably stare at your phone while you watch. We've seen this exact television show before.

Kidman, to be fair, does her level best as Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner called back to the position of chief M.E. in the commonwealth of Virginia after a gruesome murder. ("Gruesome" is an understatement; as a series, "Scarpetta" seems to revel in showing the mutilated, bloodied bodies of beautiful young women, pretty much all of whom are completely naked to boot.) That's the present timeline; in one that takes place roughly 20 years beforehand, Kay is played by Rosy McEwen, whom you might recognize from "Blue Jean" or a Season 7 episode of "Black Mirror" titled "Bête Noire," but her general deal is the same — she's just a younger medical examiner trying to find a serial killer targeting those beautiful young women.

Just like any other crime series, "Scarpetta" — which provided its full first season to critics and also dropped all eight episodes on Amazon Prime on March 11 — contains plenty of red herrings and attempts at misdirection. While the ending does, without spoiling it, provide some satisfaction, it doesn't make up for the rest of the viewing experience. "Scarpetta" doesn't trust its audience, and that drags the whole show down.

Something I will say about "Scarpetta" is it assembled an incredible cast to tell its story — with Rosy McEwen as the standout in the past timeline, though Amanda Righetti does an admirable job reprising her "troubled sister" role from "The O.C." decades ago as Kay's sister Dorothy — and most of them do the best they can with the material they're given. Obviously, Nicole Kidman is good; Kidman is good in almost everything and manages to turn in compelling performances even with the most meager material. Simon Baker evokes "The Mentalist" as a hard-boiled FBI profiler who just so happens to be Kay's husband, but it's Bobby Cannavale, honestly, who's the most pleasant surprise. Cannavale is such a naturalistic and charming performer in literally everything that, even when given infuriating expository dialogue, he manages to make it feel fun and fresh — and for context, he plays former detective Pete Marino, who's been working with Kay for decades and is now married to her sister Dorothy.

Let's talk about Dorothy, shall we? Jamie Lee Curtis — one of three Oscar-winners in the cast — is dreadful as the present timeline's Dorothy, who is just Curtis' character from "The Bear" in a different outfit. (Ariana DeBose, the non-Kidman Oscar winner, is fine as Dorothy's daughter Lucy, but she's saddled with an absolutely bizarre AI-girlfriend subplot that's borderline impossible for her to successfully sell.) In all of her scenes, Curtis overacts, yells, flings her arms akimbo, and just acts like a "crazy lady," something she's apparently been honing for a while now. It's irritating on "The Bear," to be frank, and it's even more grating here when you contrast it with Kidman's incredibly grounded performance.

Again, what I want to really stress here is that we've already seen several different versions of "Scarpetta," and most of them were better than this. Even other Nicole Kidman crime shows, like "The Undoing" or, of course, "Big Little Lies," are better options than "Scarpetta," which stumbles its way to the finish line across eight episodes that feel like a chore to watch.

The dialogue, unfortunately, is the real problem. The direction and cinematography is often eerie and atmospheric, and again, the performances are really good for the most part. The way that the characters speak to each other, though, is so egregiously distracting and genuinely dumb that it makes the entire enterprise just feel absurd. Characters say things like "fighting is the language of siblings" (Dorothy yells this at Kay in a graveyard in the present timeline) or "do you mean your wife, the chief medical examiner on this case?!" 

"Scarpetta" isn't a Netflix show, but it's taking cues from some of that streamer's originals which, according to a 2025 article in n+1, are literally designed so that audiences only have to devote a small portion of their attention to whatever's happening on-screen. The fact that "Scarpetta" can't give its audience any credit and indicate things instead of just having a character like Dorothy yell clarifying details at us is its fatal flaw, because every single dramatic or emotional moment in the series is undercut by the clunky, often interminable dialogue. "Scarpetta" has an interesting story underneath its overwritten script somewhere, but considering how many crime shows there are, it doesn't feel worth it to stick around to find it.

"Scarpetta" is streaming on Amazon Prime now.