Scarpetta Review: Renowned forensic pathologist Dr Kay Scarpetta dives deep into investigating a haunting murder that reminds her of her first big case from 1998. Along with Detective Pete Marino and FBI Agent Benton Wesley, she decides to try to find the culprit before it’s too late.
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Scarpetta Prime Video Cast
Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bobby Cannavale, Simon Baker, Ariana DeBose, Rosy McEwen, Amanda Righetti, Jake Cannavale, Hunter Parrish
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Scarpetta Series Director
David Gordon Green
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Scarpetta 2026 Showrunner
Liz Sarnoff
The series has 8 episodes, each about 45 minutes long, and is based on Patricia Cornwell’s book series of the same name.
Scarpetta Review
If I ever were a fan of a book series, or a protagonist in a book series for that matter, it would be Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta. This new Prime Video adaptation isn’t based on a single book; rather, it’s a mash-up of multiple stories and moments, focusing on Scarpetta both as a new pathologist and as someone who has been in the game for decades. Both these iterations come with their own challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated industry, wherein she is doubted every time she tries to make any sort of move.
However, in Prime Video’s Scarpetta, it’s difficult to ascertain which part of the series is supposed to go with what, as nothing really fits together. There are a lot of grisly crime scenes that you’d expect to lead to some hard-hitting investigation and whatnot. However, somehow that leads to a lot of melodrama and a lot of annoying crying… and AI wives. I couldn’t figure out where one thing started and another ended, as the series doesn’t give an indication of what it wants to achieve.
I mean, I will be honest; Cornwell, too, went a little off centre after the first few books. But showrunner Liz Sarnoff’s writing doesn’t seem to know what genre it wants to be, and we are stuck watching adults behave like petulant children for far too long for the crime stuff to even be remotely memorable or important. In the midst of this is Kidman’s Kay, who is just so annoyingly obvious and forgettable that it’s hard to find the connection between this version and the one from the books.
The impressive ensemble cast will give you whiplash because you expect it to be the most interesting part of the series in a way. However, everyone constantly screams at each other, and the cacophony of voices drowns out not only the characters’ complexities, but also the story that they want to tell us. I especially found Lee Curtis and Kidman’s bickering from the moment we see them together on-screen – it’s insufferable. And don’t even get me started on the AI stuff; it’s so unnecessary that it leaves you confused rather than adding anything to the runtime.
In the end, Scarpetta left me bored. I think Rosy McEwen is the only interesting part of the show, and she made me want to see where her timeline goes. The present is a bit too toxic and chaotic for my liking. It distracts from this complicated case at hand and leaves us absolutely uninterested in watching people scream at one another. There are nuances in the characters and years of history, but it never really gets cleared at any point, and the series never really tries to push the boundaries to make it happen, either.
Final Thoughts
Scarpetta is absolutely frustrating and leaves us to wonder whether this is a crime thriller or a melodrama. The core storyline is absolutely intriguing, but it’s the series’s complete unwillingness to understand what it wants to be, and the incessant bickering, that leaves a bad taste in the mouth and distracts us from what is important.
What are your thoughts on Scarpetta? Let us know in the comments below!
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