“Scarpetta” may bring to mind three things: Cinderella, a plate full of sauce, and Kay, the legendary forensic pathologist (inspired by a real person, Marcella Farinelli Fierro, of clear Italian origins) protagonist of the famous series of novels by Patricia Cornwell, and now of a new crime thriller TV series coming out on Prime Video on Wednesday 11 March with all 8 episodes of the first season, with the second already confirmed for some time.

Whether you have at home at least one of the over one hundred million copies sold by the books, or whether until recently you were only familiar with the first two meanings of “shoe” (in addition obviously to the family of Neapolitan actors to which Eduardo belongs), you cannot refrain from trying to watch the new TV series created and written by Liz Sarnoff together with Cornwell herself (who also plays a small part), and starring Nicole Kidman in the current version of the medical examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia, with the same divine Kidman also in the as a producer together with another Hollywood star like Jamie Lee Curtis.

First of all, because this series does not adapt any specific novel, so there are neither expectations to meet nor a story to know before pressing play. Indeed, in fact, this Scarpetta also allows for several differences in the biography of the characters transposed onto the screen: to give a spoiler-free personal example, Lee Curtis’ Dorothy Scarpetta is here Kay’s older sister.

And so let’s find out in more detail who the main characters are and what the plot of Scarpetta is, and then analyze its strengths and weaknesses. If you are in a hurry, at the end of the review we report the official trailer in Italian.

What Scarpetta is about

Several years after her departure, Kay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman) returns to her role as Virginia’s chief medical examiner just when a horribly disfigured body is found.

Investigations into the crime soon reveal a connection to a serial killer from nearly thirty years earlier, the first major case in Scarpetta’s career. It was then that Kay (played by Rosy McEwen) met police detective Pete Marino (father and son Bobby and Jake Cannavale), FBI special agent Benton Wesley (as a young Hunter Parrish, in the present the “mentalist” Simon Baker) and various other characters who were decisive, positively or negatively, for her professional career and her life path.

The evidence that has emerged in the current case has the effect of completely calling Kay’s beliefs about the 1998 murders into question: to solve the mystery, Kay will need the help of Pete, Benton, her beloved niece Lucy (Ariana DeBose as she grows up, Savannah Lumar in the past) and even her older sister Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis and Amanda Righetti), with whom she has always had a complicated relationship, but who is also the only one who knows all of Kay’s traumas, starting from the one linked to the death of her father.

Why watch Scarpetta: so much love for Cornwell’s world

There are multiple reasons why it is worth watching the 8 three-quarter-hour episodes that make up this first season of Scarpetta, even without being an avid reader of Cornwell’s novels.

There is the pleasure of seeing Jamie Lee Curtis again who, after having enjoyed it in The Bear, plays the Italian American, with a discreet accent when she utters a few sentences in Italian (even better than Bobby Cannavale).

There is a Rosy McEwen who is not afraid of comparison with Nicole Kidman, and both give body and soul to a Kay who shows signs of the tragedies of the past and of how she has learned to protect herself, with an armor of ice that the always gorgeous Kidman wears with extreme naturalness.

There is curiosity about a technology used by Lucy which inevitably reminded us of another Prime Video series, the recently concluded Upload.

But more generally, this Scarpetta must be tried because it exudes love for the characters born from Patricia Cornwell’s imagination: through an intricate and compelling story, which will need the already confirmed season 2 to reach the epilogue, Elizabeth Sarnoff pays homage to a global icon of contemporary literature.

The final result is a show that, perhaps also thanks to its long gestation, is born already mature in its narration, in the construction of the characters and in staging a story that takes the liberty of some divergence with the original material, but always respecting its tones, representations and values.

The double track between present and past seems, in this sense, to underline the greatness of Cornwell, who for over three decades has continued to fascinate readers with the stories of a character who, with every means and in every era, never goes out of fashion because she never stops questioning herself. Shortly after Guy Ritchie’s young Sherlock Holmes, Prime Video hits the mark with another mystery myth.

Rating: 8