Across parallel timelines, ‘Scarpetta’ is in the details

The medical examiner - most every procedural series has one, cutting into corpses, analyzing stomach contents, pointing out bullet holes and strange residues and the effects of blunt force trauma.

- BY EMILY ZEMLER

SERIES MVP Bobby Cannavale with Ariana DeBose.

As characters, they may be flamboyant and/or ironic in a way often denied to the central investigators, whom they are likely to find a little irritating.

Often they are fan favorites, like David McCallum's Dr. Ducky Mallard on "NCIS," Tamala Jones' Dr. Lanie Parish on "Castle," or Annette Badland's Dr. Fleur Perkins on "Midsomer Murders." But now and again the medical examiner will go beyond the job description to become the investigator your Dr. Maura Isles, your Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, and the grandpappy of them all, Jack Klugman's "Quincy, M.E." - leaving credential cops in the dust.

Which brings us to "Scarpetta," which premiered Wednesday on Prime Video and is based on the novels of Patricia Cornwell-she has written a passel since 1990, though, surprisingly, this is the first time her Kay Scarpetta has made it to the screen. Kay, played by Nicole Kidman, is newly back in harness as the chief medical officer of the Commonwealth of Virginia, a job she'd held before being pushed out some unspecified years earlier. The series runs on parallel timelines, in the present day and 28 years earlier at the time of Kay's "first big case, the one I build my whole career and reputation on" a serial murder affair whose solution a new crop of murders is bringing into question.