Patricia Cornwell wrote the first of her wildly popular Scarpetta novels — a series of crime fiction oriented around the life and work of medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta — in 1990. There are 29 Scarpetta books in total, most of them having hit the NYT bestseller list when they debuted. And yet, it has taken all this time for Dr. Kay Scarpetta to move from the page to the screen, several attempts at adapting her work for film or television fizzling out through the years. But at last she’s here, the backbone of the eponymous new Prime series that adapts a mix of the Scarpetta novels, often to mixed results.
The brash and brainy doctor is brought to life by Nicole Kidman in the show’s present-day timeline and Rosy McEwen in the show’s 1990s timeline, which we bounce between as Scarpetta’s current work trying to figure out how two female joggers ended up dead in the same spot begins to eerily intersect with a serial killer case she worked at the beginning of her career. Kidman, certified queen of streamer thriller series, delights as usual and has particularly great chemistry with Simon Baker, who plays her FBI profiler husband and Bobby Cannavale, who plays her brother-in-law and “work husband” (and whose real-life son plays his younger counterpart in the 1990s timeline). But Kidman’s actually ultimately upstaged by McEwen, who surprises in establishing herself as the real star of the show, despite all marketing materials championing the more well known Kidman’s face. They end up with about equal screen-time, perhaps Kidman with a bit more, but it’s the younger Scarpetta who feels like a more fully realized character, largely thanks to McEwen’s performance.
Ultimately, much of Scarpetta views like a more grisly arc from Criminal Minds. But cut the body open, and there are some interesting things beneath the surface, even if Scarpetta ends up making a muddled mess of them. In its finest moments, Scarpetta is a very compelling story about grief — and the ways we fuck ourselves and others up when confronted with it — beneath all the serial killer twists and turns (and hey, it must be said, some of those twists and turns got me good). The twisted, toxic relationship between Scarpetta and her sister Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis, who I’m convinced has forgotten how to act but is ultimately good at this one-note thing she does here, almost a caricature version of her character on The Bear) is one of my favorite parts of the series. The characters and their relationships across the board are compelling, especially in their mess and muck. I like that this is crime fiction without heroes, only villains and then people trying to do good who also often end up doing a lot of bad. It doesn’t view as cynical so much as deeply human.
But on the subject of human, I found myself often getting distracted from the actual murder mystery of it all because I couldn’t quite parse exactly what the show is trying to say about AI, a very present topic in the narrative thanks to Scarpetta’s gay niece Lucy, played by Ariana DeBose. Here is where things will get a bit spoilery, so you’ve been warned (though the spoilers are very specific to the show’s exploration of AI, not to the murders).
Lucy, a genius coder child who grows up to be a computer programmer (and hacker, when called upon by her aunt), spends all day everyday talking to her dead wife via an advanced AI program that mimics her wife’s likeness and conversational patterns. I made it pretty clear how I feel about griefbots in my recap of Pluribus season one, episode three. Lucy talks to this AI version of her dead wife Janet as if she were real and not just a piece of code. It seems generally agreed upon by the rest of her family that this is unhealthy behavior, her aunt and her mother Dorothy often whispering about it, afraid to actually confront Lucy directly about it. Lucy indeed tends to snap when detecting even a whiff of judgment.
Then Dorothy changes her tune after she accidentally spends an afternoon drunkenly talking to AI-Janet, who does the thing AI chatbots are programmed to do, affirming the user and telling them exactly what they want to hear. Scarily, it only takes a few minutes before Dorothy, who has built a prosperous career as a children’s author despite being the world’s worst mother, suddenly wants to use the AI to help her plot her next book. Later in the series, Dorothy talks about AI-Janet in a way that hints at the early signs of AI-induced psychosis.
Indeed, at its surface, this all seems very clearly like an anti-AI message, one that underscores just how easy it is for someone to slip under the influence of chatbots in particular. Dorothy flips from thinking her daughter is delaying grief via the AI to obsessing over the AI in an instant.
But against all the horror happening elsewhere in the story, this AI bit, especially when it comes to Dorothy, is almost played more for laughs rather than being another piece of Scarpetta‘s puzzle about violence and the uglier parts of grief. In a brief moment in one episode, AI-Janet also provides Scarpetta with a piece of information that turns out to be useful, seemingly undercutting the message that this tool is an insidious presence. I could give a generous reading of this, which would be that the writers are trying to show that even if AI does sometimes get some things right, its positive contributions are far outweighed by its negative impact on humanity. But again, I think that would be generous. AI-Janet becomes a very strange device in Scarpetta‘s storytelling, and as a result, I fear that the show could be viewed by someone staunchly anti-AI and someone who loves AI and result in both people walking away with their opinions validated. That’s not a nuanced, complex message; it’s a noncommittal one.
Lucy is petulant, childish, myopic, but the writing never really draws a direct line between these traits and her usage of AI, instead dancing around it. The show similarly makes a last-ditch effort to contend with the racial dynamics of Lucy’s upbringing as a young woman of color raised by two white women that falls completely flat.
In a major reveal toward the end of the season, AI-Janet tells Scarpetta that Janet never wanted to be immortalized this way. Again, we seem back on track here with a more cogent critique of AI. Janet knew the real cost of this kind of programming and was therefore against it. Suddenly, Lucy’s actions become even more selfish and misguided. But before the real weight of that revelation can land, we quickly move on. There’s a lot of talking around the issues of AI on the show.
This pattern echoes throughout Scarpetta, which tries to say something about race and ultimately says nothing and tries to say something about feminism/#MeToo but ultimately says nothing. There are several thematic threads present that could turn Scarpetta into a more complex tapestry, but the script rips them out in favor of the more genre formula-satisfying beats. I don’t want a show to over-explain things, but when it comes to Scarpetta, it feels telling which parts it does over-explain and which it leaves more vague. Perhaps it’s also the result of the series adapting from a wealth of material rather than being a more direct adaptation of one book; it’s simply overstuffed.
Much of the mystery is tied up nicely by the end, but we’re left with plenty of loose threads when it comes to the deeper narrative work that could have made Scarpetta stand out in its genre. It is not a subtle show, so when it pulls back on these deeper topics, it feels less like the writing is going for nuance and more like it’s sitting on the fence. (Can a series on Prime ever be convincingly anti-AI? I don’t know.)
I’m glad there’s some queerness to the show, especially as Patricia Cornwell herself is queer. I don’t mind at all that the queer characters here aren’t exactly ones I’d root for — one not a person at all but a chatbot, one very annoying and AI-loving, and one a cop (Tiya Sircar) — because I no longer need my queer representation to be sanitized. But that’s the weird thing here; the queer characters of Scarpetta actually do feel sanitized against the scale of just how fucked-up and messy the other characters get to be. The chemistry never really crackles between Sircar and DeBose, though it has less to do with their performances and more to do with the writing, which becomes so sterilized in the queer scenes, whereas the rest of the series gets to be so visceral. My wife also pointed out the queer characters on the show touch each other way less than any of the other characters, perhaps contributing to the flatness of their dynamics.
Look, I had fun. Give me two squabbling sisters, a serial killer story, and a dual timeline, and I’ll have fun. McEwen is a certified star, and I found myself more engrossed by the 1990s timeline, perhaps thanks to the lack of puzzling AI storytelling but largely because of McEwen and because of the puzzlebox of the 1990s mystery being the more interesting one to solve. The strengths of the series are numerous, especially when it comes to the parts that feel like a gothic family drama. There are the makings of a great series here, and maybe the second season (which is already ordered) can push it there.
