BODIES of evidence

NICOLE KIDMAN on stepping into the shoes of Patricia Cornwell's iconic forensic pathologist

- SEAN MARLAND

SCARPETTA NEW FROM WEDNESDAY 11 MARCH, PRIME VIDEO THRILLER

Nicole Kidman is relishing the opportunity to take on one of crime fiction's most formidable women in her latest thriller, Scarpetta. Landing on Prime Video this week, the eight-episode series is inspired by American author Patricia Cornwell's novels Postmortem (1990) and Autopsy (2021), the first and 25th stories in her ongoing, bestselling collection centring around trailblazing forensic pathologist Dr Kay Scarpetta.

Unfolding across two timelines, the drama finds Oscar-winning film star Nicole (The Hours) portraying the character in the present day as Kay returns to her former post as Virginia's chief medical examiner and is tasked with a murder that eerily echoes her first case in 1998, with Rosy McEwen (Close to Me) playing a 30-something version of the role in flashback sequences.

In current times, Kay, who is married to FBI profiler Benton Wesley (The Mentalist's Simon Baker), must also navigate some complex family dynamics with her bombastic older sister Dorothy Farinelli (Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis) and Dorothy's tech-savvy daughter Lucy (Westworld's Ariana DeBose).

There's also the reappearance of her ex, and Dorothy's husband, detective Pete Marino (Only Murders in the Building's Bobby Cannavale; his real-life son, actor Jake Cannavale, plays the character in the 1990s).