{"id":532712,"date":"2026-03-11T06:38:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T06:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/532712\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T06:38:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T06:38:17","slug":"nicole-kidmans-new-amazon-prime-series-fails-to-impress-despite-star-studded-cast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/532712\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicole Kidman’s new Amazon Prime series fails to impress despite star-studded cast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Louise<\/p>\n

March 11, 2026 \u2014 2:35pm<\/p>\n

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Scarpetta \u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

Nicole Kidman<\/a> has made working with female directors and showrunners a priority over the past decade or so, and she also has a long history of pushing female-forward stories on screen. She has been so prolific \u2013 she has another five projects due on screen in the next year or so \u2013 that not everything will be a winner.<\/p>\n

\"KayKay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman) and Dorothy Farinelli (Jamie Lee Curtis) in Scarpetta.<\/p>\n

Scarpetta, adapted from Patricia Cornwell\u2019s bestselling book series and created by Liz Sarnoff, I\u2019m sorry to say, is not a winner. It is mid-TV, the kind that gives the impression of being prestige \u2013 big-name cast, well-known source material, a deep-pocketed streaming service \u2013 but leaves you feeling, well, meh. You watch it, you move on. It doesn\u2019t stick.<\/p>\n

Kidman plays Virginia\u2019s chief medical officer, Kay Scarpetta. She\u2019s in her 50s, a seasoned forensic pathologist who built her name and reputation on a serial killer case 28 years ago. She was pushed out of the job for reasons that aren\u2019t immediately clear, but now she\u2019s back in town just as the serial killer appears to have re-emerged.<\/p>\n

As such, the eight epsiodes are split over two timelines, with Rosy McEwen as the younger, sassy Kay, who wears snazzy checked suits to work, smokes in her car and has eyes on a young FBI profiler, Wesley Benton (Hunter Parrish), who has joined the case.<\/p>\n

\"NicoleNicole Kidman as chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward to the present day, and it\u2019s Kidman smoking in her car (surely, as someone who carves up bodies for living, Kay would have quit by now!), then snapping on the gloves as she heads to a crime scene where a woman (it\u2019s always a woman!) has been found dead next to railway tracks. The murder has all the hallmarks of the previous killer Kay caught, so could she possibly have made a mistake?<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Louis<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, and that young FBI agent? In the present-day timeline he\u2019s now her husband, played by Simon Baker<\/a>, who is also working on the same case. The pair have been living in Boston (doing what? It\u2019s not really explained) and have returned to Virginia, where they move back into Wesley\u2019s old family mansion, which is currently home to Kay\u2019s older sister Dot Farinelli (Jamie Lee Curtis), a successful children\u2019s author, and her husband \u2013 and Kay\u2019s old work partner \u2013 Pete Marino (Bobby Cannavale, whose son Jake appears as young Pete).<\/p>\n

Also living on the property is Dot\u2019s daughter, Lucy (Ariana DeBose), who is coping with the death of her wife by talking to a computer-generated version of her every day (it\u2019s wacky, again it\u2019s not explained, so best to just go with it).<\/p>\n

The family dynamic is pretty dysfunctional: Lucy, who is some type of computer ace who made a lot of money as a teenager, doesn\u2019t really talk to her mum, Dot; Kay and Dot argue in the kitchen; Wesley spends his time at home quietly disappearing from every room; while Pete, Lucy and Kay eventually get some kind of work buddy thing happening.<\/p>\n

They are all clearly a mess, and it\u2019s as if the writers watched The Bear\u2019s \u201cFishes\u201d episode \u2013 the one in the second season where Curtis\u2019 character Donna, Carmy\u2019s mum, crashes the car into the living room \u2013 and thought, \u201cLet\u2019s re-create that!\u201d Curtis, certainly, seems to be hanging onto Donna, as she\u2019s all fingernails and frantic energy, while Kidman is so controlled that it\u2019s hard to tell when she\u2019s angry, upset or feeling any emotion at all.<\/p>\n

Her Scarpetta is clearly happier at work than she is at home, driven over the passing decades to prove herself. Kidman has dropped her voice a note or two to give it gravitas, while Kay works with purpose in the autopsy room. Why Kidman would want to add this to her resume is not clear. Yes, Kay Scarpetta is a powerful woman working in a man\u2019s world, but Kidman seems almost bored.<\/p>\n

Scarpetta doesn\u2019t have the sexual rush of her 2024 film Babygirl<\/a>, and it isn\u2019t as delightfully unhinged as her recent Netflix series The Perfect Couple<\/a>. Sure, the crime stuff is fine and the cast \u2013 on paper \u2013 is cracking, but it doesn\u2019t quite click. Cannavale holds it together the best, while McEwen, as young Kay, is also terrific.<\/p>\n

\"YoungYoung Kay (Rosy McEwen) and young Marino (Jake Cannavale) in Scarpetta.<\/p>\n

There are 29 books in Cornwell\u2019s series, so there\u2019s obviously something about Kay that clicks with readers (and publishers), but whatever it is, it isn\u2019t quite working on screen.<\/p>\n

Scarpetta is streaming on Amazon Prime Video from March 11. <\/p>\n

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"LouiseLouise Rugendyke<\/a> is the National TV editor and a senior culture writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 11, 2026 \u2014 2:35pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":["post-532712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}