{"id":527488,"date":"2026-03-10T19:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T19:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/527488\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T19:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T19:51:07","slug":"nicole-kidmans-shoddiest-show-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/527488\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicole Kidman’s shoddiest show yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who is holding Nicole Kidman hostage and forcing her to work on flimsy TV shows, the kind where you want to shake her shoulders and say, \u201cYou\u2019re better than this\u201d? Most of her recent small-screen projects have been forgettable and don\u2019t display the Babygirl star<\/a>\u2018s acting prowess in the way Big Little Lies<\/a> did. In the almost 10 years since that award-winning HBO series debuted, Kidman has been on a mission to be part of increasingly substandard dramas like The Undoing, The Perfect Couple<\/a>, Lioness, and Nine Perfect Strangers<\/a>. Her latest, which was adapted from Patricia Cornwell\u2019s book series, marks a low point in this journey. Despite the talent involved behind and in front of the camera, Scarpetta is a hot mess, like one of those fake shows used as punchlines in 30 Rock and Insecure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike The Perfect Couple, Scarpetta isn\u2019t even dreadful in an entertaining way. It takes itself way too seriously to feel like a breezy page-turner come to life because the laughable packaging doesn\u2019t match the desired intensity. The result is eight hour-long episodes that tell a dark, sordid tale in an unexciting way. It doesn\u2019t help that the ensemble isn\u2019t aligned with what they\u2019re collectively supposed to be doing here. Kidman moves like she\u2019s in a Mare Of Easttown-type prestige series, a flashy Jamie Lee Curtis is still in The Bear mode, Simon Baker (wearing the same expression throughout) is in a weaker version of Mindhunter, and Ariana DeBose is trapped in a Black Mirror-esque plotline. Only Bobby Cannavale, as much-needed comic relief, seems to understand the tonal absurdity. (He is to Scarpetta what Billy Crudup is to The Morning Show.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Series creator Liz Sarnoff (Lost) is unfortunately unable to craft a seamless narrative that bops between two timelines. In the present day, esteemed chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta (Kidman) investigates a grisly murder with the help of her trusted brother-in-law, former cop Pete Marino (Cannavale). This particular case takes myriad turns, from a space-related twist to one involving a suspect-turned-cult leader. Doesn\u2019t all this sound weird? And yet, Scarpetta plays this out too straightforwardly. The case loses momentum because of the heavy focus on Kay\u2019s complicated family. Her husband, FBI profiler Benton Wesley (Baker), looks into the crime but has to keep it a secret from her. He is so poorly written, though, that last-minute switcheroos in his arc land with a thud. Then there\u2019s Kay\u2019s loud-mouthed sister, Dorothy (a miscast Curtis), who can\u2019t let go of her party-girl persona and enters her gay kid\u2019s room by asking, \u201cHello, anybody homo?\u201d Her belief that Kay and Pete\u2019s working relationship has more to it than meets the eye sends her into a troubling spiral.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Kay and Dorothy\u2019s sisterhood is also strained because of the latter\u2019s grown-up daughter, Lucy (DeBose), whom Kay took care of when she was younger because her sis kept jetting out of town. Now Lucy\u2014who also conveniently worked for the FBI\u2014mourns her dead wife by consistently talking to an AI version of her. She struggles to move on, despite getting attention from Pete and Kay\u2019s co-worker, Blaise Fruge (Tiya Sircar). DeBose\u2019s confounding performance wavers between melodramatic and nonchalance. It rivals the flat work from Kidman, who seems least interested in delving into her character\u2019s interiority. If Scarpetta bored its lead, imagine what it can do to its audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other big problem is the ineffectiveness of the past timeline and its failure to add context to these characters and how they deal with their current issues. In 1998, a younger Kay (Rosy McEwan), with the help of Pete (Jake Cannavale) and Benton (Hunter Parrish), tries to find a serial killer who assaults and ties up his female victims. (It\u2019s the same M.O. as the present-day murders.) Along the way, she makes an enemy out of everyone else, from her own dubious assistant to a douchey city attorney. But the show never clarifies why Kay was and remains a target besides broadly suggesting it\u2019s due to her gender. There\u2019s little insight into how she actually feels about and deals with the misogyny. The surface-level traits make it tough to invest in the show\u2019s outcome. Plus, supporting players like Mike Vogel, Stephanie Faracy, and especially David Hornsby are cast in thankless roles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even on a technical level, Scarpetta comes across as a lazily constructed project. Directors David Gordon Green and Charlotte Br\u00e4ndstr\u00f6m (The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings of Power) try too hard to make the horror element work, and the show\u2019s editing in the finale suddenly throws in a surreal effect that doesn\u2019t mesh. In other words, Scarpetta makes little sense. It somehow has too much and not enough going on at the same time, with the promise of more to come with a cliff-hanger. Let\u2019s hope all it does is motivate Kidman to finally start being selective about her TV roles.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club\u2018s TV critic. Scarpetta premieres March 11 on Prime Video.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who is holding Nicole Kidman hostage and forcing her to work on flimsy TV shows, the kind where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-527488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}