Scarpetta - Bridge of Time, Part One
Focused on stories nearly three decades apart, both Rosy McEwen and Nicole Kidman play Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta based on the character introduced in Patricia Cornwell's novels. While Kidman plays the character returning to the job after being forced out years before, McEwen plays the younger version of the character tackling her first big case (which made her career but also appears to be linked to a new murder that calls the old investigation into question).
When sticking strictly to the case, either in present or past, the "Bridge of Time, Part One" is marginally passable. However, the extended supporting cast is used in baffling ways with Jamie Lee Curtis playing Kay's sister as some kind of deranged megalomaniac and I don't even know what to make of Ariana DeBose as Kay's niece who appears both autistic and heavily traumatized (but comes off pretty normal when compared to her mother played by Curtis). Bobby Cannavale is oddly mixed into both this family dynamic and the investigation while The Mentalist's Simon Baker is largely wasted in the first episode.
The first episode of the series, meant to introduce us to all the major players (and some unnecessary behind-the-scene politics in the forensic department) attempts to tease a larger mystery that crosses both time periods. However, I have a hard time imagining sitting through seven more hours of the series to see how this all fits together would be, in any way, time well spent.
- Title: Scarpetta - Bridge of Time, Part One
- IMDb: link
