‘Scarpetta’ Review: Nicole Kidman’s Grim, by-the-Book Crime Drama Is Just Weird Enough to Remember

There are weird shows, and then there are unexpectedly weird shows. The former covers a wide gamut. David Lynch’s 1990 surrealist masterpiece, “Twin Peaks,” with its extra-dimensional tiled rooms and multitude of homicidal spirits? Weird show. FX’s 2011 black-comic sitcom, “Wilfred,” about a depressed guy who thinks his neighbor’s dog is actually a man in a dog suit? Weird show. Steve Conrad’s 2021 stop-motion animated musical crime-noir, “Ultra City Smiths,” which, to be clear, uses dolls’ heads to perform a musical that’s also a modern crime noir? Weird show!

The unexpectedly weird shows, though, their individual peculiarities can be fascinating. It’s one thing to build your series around atypical people, places, and things, but it’s quite another to build a typical series with typical characters in typical locations doing the typical TV stuff, only to introduce a handful of oddities that simply don’t fit. If they’re too weird, then they risk overwhelming the traditional aspects viewers rely on for comfort and security. If they’re not weird enough, then they’re a distraction, an incongruity, a hangnail on an otherwise finely manicured hand.

“Scarpetta” lands somewhere in the satisfying middle: not as weird as it could be, by any means, but weird enough to be remembered for the right reasons. Showrunner Liz Sarnoff’s adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s long-running book series fits the mold of what modern genre fans expect from their detective-driven crime dramas (the live-action kind, anyway): It’s a star-studded murder-mystery split across two timelines, told with persisting gravitas, and accented with socio-political themes.

But it also throws enough curveballs to keep viewers from zoning out amid all that familiarity. There you are, just humming along, watching Nicole Kidman cut up corpses, and wham! Suddenly she’s crushing skulls — actual human skulls — with a baseball bat. Then it’s back to the family drama, listening to sisters toss barbs over who’s in love with who, when bam! An AI character shows up (played by a real actor, thank goodness) and… just… hangs around. OK, back to the investigation, where you’re hearing a few good leads until wowza! Something’s going on… in space?!

Fans of Nicole Kidman know the drill. The Aussie superstar may earn regular acclaim for her Serious work in Important awards fare — she won her Academy Award playing renowned author and historical figure, Virginia Woolf, and her Emmy as an abused wife and mother in “Big Little Lies” — but she’ll also wholeheartedly embody a woman who eats Polaroid photographs, a taxidermist who tries to mount a marmalade-addicted bear, and a widow who thinks her dead husband may have been reincarnated as a 10-year-old boy.

Her “Scarpetta” character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, skews closer to Kidman’s serious side, but the show around her still relishes tilting into bizarro world. When we first meet the chief medical examiner of Virginia, Kay is examining a chilling scene that’s a little too familiar for her and all too familiar for crime drama enthusiasts: A woman is dead. Her body was stripped naked, tied up, and dumped in the woods. Her hands are missing, too, but what catches Kay’s eye seems far less significant: a flattened penny.

Cut to 28 years earlier and Kay (played in the past by Rosy McEwen) is investigating a similar crime scene where another woman has been killed, stripped, and tied up. This time, she’s in her bed, but everything else calls the present-day murder to mind: Are the cases connected? Is it the same killer? And if either answer is yes, what did she get wrong back then that could come back to haunt her now?

The crime show clichés are already stacking up — dead women, haunted cops, a potential serial killer — but “Scarpetta” keeps ’em coming. (Lest we forget, Cornwell’s first book was published in 1990.) Episodes are split fairly equally between the past and the present. Suspects pop up everywhere, many portrayed by recognizable guest stars. (Shout-out to “Star Trek’s” Captain Pike, aka Anson Mount, and his silly little mustache.) Kay’s extended family is involved, too. Not only does she have a tragic backstory related to a beloved parent, but her living, breathing loved ones have been very present during both cases.

There’s her sister, Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis), who’s as loud and boisterous as Kay is quiet and disciplined. Despite her constant drinking and volatile personality, she’s made a small fortune as a children’s book author, which is only mentioned in passing, seemingly to explain how she can spend her days gulping down wine.

Dorothy’s husband, Pete (Bobby Cannavale), is less flappable, if only by a hair. He’s a former detective who worked with Kay on the first series of murders and whom she recruits again for the second. Loud and uncouth but with a heart of gold, Pete’s bond with “the doc,” as he calls Kay, rivals his bonds of matrimony with her sister, and you better believe that split loyalty becomes a sticking point between the siblings (especially since Kay is married to Pete’s opposite: Benton, a wealthy, soft-spoken FBI Agent played by Simon Baker).

Jamie Lee Curtis in ‘Scarpetta’Courtesy of Connie Chornuk / Amazon Prime Video

Director David Gordon Green (who worked with Curtis on the “Halloween” revivals) sets a bleak tone in the premiere (the splitscreen autopsies are… a lot), but the ensemble’s colorful personalities help to break up the morbid central mystery, and he balances the dual timelines well. While there’s an inevitable lull whenever relatively unknown actors take over for two Oscar winners, The Mentalist, and Mr. Rose Byrne, it’s slight enough to avoid sapping momentum. The secrets tumbling out of the past double to inform our perception of the present, and they’re dispersed at a steady pace, which helps to keep us hooked.

Still, what prevents “Scarpetta” from disappearing into the insatiable maw of today’s multitude of TV murder-mysteries are its odd flourishes. Kay’s niece, Lucy (Ariana DeBose) — who she helped raise while Dorothy was off galavanting with her previous husbands — recently lost her wife, Janet (Janet Montgomery). Awash in grief, she turns to a convenient if unhealthy source of comfort: an AI version of Janet. The two converse as if Janet is a hostage on a permanent Zoom call, always sitting in the same room, in the same clothes, talking to the same nonexistent camera.

It’s very weird, and my only complaint is it doesn’t lead anywhere half as strange as the decision to include an AI wife to begin with. It’s also thematically relevant, given Kay’s obsession with death (starting with her tragic backstory and running through her current job), as is — somehow! — a wild swing in Episode 5 involving synthetic organs, Russian spies, and a space station. Again, it’s a bit disappointing that the ensuing episodes can’t top the midway insanity (and the big reveal at the end isn’t as satisfying as it should be), but it’s all worth it just to hear Kidman give one batshit line reading I will not spoil. (It’s in Episode 5, and you can’t miss it.)

Really, it’s all worth it because “Scarpetta” is not a Serious or Important show. It’s a dime-store paperback put through Hollywood’s prestige machine. Each bonkers bit is a nice reminder not to take anything too seriously. Just enjoy the weirdness. Kidman certainly is.

Grade: C+

“Scarpetta” premieres Wednesday, March 11 on Amazon Prime Video. All eight episodes will be released at once.