Crime
Young Sherlock
It may suffer from an identity crisis, but Young Sherlock is still much cleaner than other recent interpretations of the iconic detective.
“Second time’s the charm.”
So says Dr. Kay Scarpetta as she finishes taking her oath of office as Virginia’s new chief medical examiner.
She held the gig more than two decades earlier, making her name by finding and catching a notorious serial killer.
She left the office (and all of Virginia) shortly thereafter. But Scarpetta’s back now, and back in her old office. Alas, it sure looks like the serial killer—you know, the one that Scarpetta caught so many years ago—is back, too. Is it possible that the good doctor built her career on catching the wrong guy?
The threat of a sadistic murderer running loose in the state would be enough to monopolize any medical examiner’s time. But Scarpetta is dealing with a few other issues, too.
She returned to Virginia (and her old gig) in part to be close to her niece, Lucy, whom she practically raised. Ever since Lucy’s wife died about a year ago, Lucy’s been easing her grief by talking with an artificial intelligence version of her dearly departed mate. And that can’t be healthy, can it?
Lucy’s mother, Dorothy, can’t be counted on to help her daughter through this difficult time. Dorothy has always been a flighty soul: She practically ran out on Lucy to chase after some guy. She’s trying to do better—but in Scarpetta’s eyes, “better” ain’t good enough.
Dorothy may also be interfering with Scarpetta’s own marriage to Benton Wesley, a longtime FBI profiler whom Scarpetta met while working on the serial killer case. As this new round of killings strains Scarpetta’s professional world, her relationship with Benton pulls at its own set of seams.
And then there’s the fact that former detective Pete Marino—Scarpetta’s best friend in the force and newly deputized assistant—is Dorothy’s husband.
Scarpetta’s dealing with some career-threatening office politics, too. And that’s a lot to deal with when you’re trying to nab a killer—one who seems to get a sexual charge from torture, mutilation and death. And given Scarpetta’s central role in the first round of killings, we have to wonder: Will the killer be coming after her?
“Second time’s the charm,” Scarpetta says. Though she might count herself lucky if she survives this second time around.
Based on a number of books by Liz Sarnoff, Scarpetta is a splashy new crime thriller on Amazon’s Prime Video.
Certainly, its A-list cast created a splash. Toggling between past and present, Nicole Kidman stars as the older Kay Scarpetta (Rosy McEwen plays her younger, late 1990s counterpart). Jamie Lee Curtis slots in as her flighty sister. A host of recognizable actors fill out the rest of the cast.
But the show comes with a splash of blood, too. No, check that: It’s more like a flood.
The killer strips his victims naked, lops off body parts and leaves these nude, disfigured folks for the police to find. And while many lurid crime thrillers would pull back at least a bit in showing viewers the carnage, Scarpetta revels in it—showing, in some way, the same sadistic glee in displaying its handiwork that its own killer does.
We see these nude corpses from every angle, and rarely is anything hidden. Their wounds—be they bloody stumps where hands used to be or partial decapitations—are trotted onscreen with a certain pride. Scarpetta’s own work as a pathologist is grotesquely documented: We watch her carve through chests, snap out rib cages and examine internal organs. In flashback, the show hints at a bit more decorum, but it still takes pains to show us the killer’s terrified, tortured victims as they draw close to death.
The living only get slightly more respect. We see plenty of skin elsewhere: In the first episode, Scarpetta takes a shower, and her female assistant walks in on her. “Marvelous how you kept your figure after all these years,” she says with a leer.
With all that content, the show’s LGBT issues, profanity, smoking and drinking feel much like an afterthought.
In summary, Scarpetta is a bit of a television nightmare. And if you watch it, it just might give you a few of your own.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out. )
The episode toggles back and forth between 1998 (as Scarpetta tries to track down a killer who’s murdered three women) and 2026 (when police find a new corpse showing many of the same telltale signs of the previous killings). In the present, Dorothy throws a birthday party for Lucy, who’s still grieving the death of her wife.
We see several nude, mutilated corpses. The hands have been cut off, and the head of one of the victims is partly severed. (We see plenty of gore associated with both wounds.) The victims have also been tied up and trussed; we’re told that the earlier victims, at least, ultimately strangled themselves when their legs tensed and stretched (which tightened the cord around the victim’s neck).
The camera captures breasts, buttocks and pubic hair in several scenes. We’re told that the killer stages the bodies and apparently derives sexual pleasure from murder: An FBI profiler suggests that the killer has been escalating—from voyeurism to rape to murder to sadistic pre-killing torture. We’re told that in one case, he forced his victim out of a shower and made her slip into a nightgown—only to cut it off.
Scarpetta conducts autopsies that involve cutting into the chests of corpses, freeing a section of ribcage (with a sickening snap) and lifting out organs like slabs of meat. We’re told the killer broke the fingers of some of his victims—significant, since those victims were a violinist and a surgeon, respectively. We hear some talk about bodily discharges.
Scarpetta takes a shower in the laboratory’s bathroom. We see her from the side (anything critical is covered by tile), and a woman comes in and marvels at her figure. Scarpetta’s niece, Lucy, mourns her late wife, and we see her talk with an AI manifestation of her. (We’re told that she’s been talking to the AI for the last year.) We hear that Scarpetta and Dorothy lost their father when both were young, and Scarpetta suggests that that exposure pushed her into her field of work.
Scarpetta’s sister, Dorothy, wears an outfit that displays quite a bit of cleavage, and we hear references to how she partially deserting her daughter to pursue yet another man. The sisters fight almost continuously.
Scarpetta and other characters smoke cigarettes. She and others drink wine and champagne as well. We hear the f-word about 16 times, the s-word about eight, the c-word once and a variety of other profanities, including “a–,” “f-g,” “d–n,” “d–khead” and “c–k.” God’s name is misused thrice (once with the word “d–n”), and Jesus’ name is abused once.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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