From Benson to Scarpetta: How women are rewriting the rules of US TV crime drama

When it comes to playing the long game, few people have more patience than fans of Dr Kay Scarpetta.

Patricia Cornwell’s forensic pathologist has been solving murders in readers’ imaginations ever since the publication of Postmortem back in 1990. Yet it has taken until 2026 for crime fiction’s most famous medical examiner to finally journey from bookshelves to the screen.

Now, at last, she arrives in Scarpetta, with Nicole Kidman snapping on the latex gloves for Prime Video. After 30-odd years of anticipation, the adaptation feels less like a premiere and more like the end of one of television’s longest gestation periods.

But Scarpetta’s debut is also oddly well-timed. Because if the current wave of American crime drama proves anything, it’s that the procedural – once the most stubbornly male corner of TV – has quietly become a genre led by women.

Every good detective needs evidence, of course, so let’s consult the schedules.

There we find the reboot of Matlock, where Kathy Bates plays an underestimated older lawyer who proves far more formidable than the sleek New York firm that hires her initially suspects.

Elsewhere, there’s High Potential, in which Kaitlin Olson’s single parent – armed with a sky-high IQ and a low tolerance for policy – becomes an unlikely asset to the LAPD.

Over in Elsbeth, Carrie Preston solves crimes largely by being so winningly kooky that suspects forget they’re supposed to be lying to her. And anchoring Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson has spent three decades proving that empathy can be just as powerful a weapon as intimidation when tackling especially heinous crimes.

What distinguishes these shows isn’t simply that women stand at their centre. It’s that the mysteries unfold differently because they do. Their appeal lies not just in who gets top billing, but in the fresh perspectives their crime-solvers bring to the case.

To see how much has changed, it helps to look back at the traditional protagonists of the police procedural.

For decades, television detectives tended to bring suspects to book through sheer force of personality. Cast your mind back to the 1970s and you’ll find the granite authority of Kojak or Ironside, both capable of taking command of a room with little more than a steely glare. Even the crumpled genius of Columbo relied on relentless persistence. However mild he appeared, he’d always tirelessly grind the truth out of his increasingly exasperated prime suspect.

Many of today’s female-led procedurals work to a different rhythm. Their lead characters don’t dominate the room; they solve the case because few expect them to. In these shows, power lies less in authority than in being misjudged – a useful advantage when everyone else assumes they’ve already worked you out.

In Matlock, Kathy Bates’s lawyer turns the assumptions people make about her into a kind of legal superpower. Over in Elsbeth, Carrie Preston knows perfectly well that suspects mistake her eccentricity for stupidity – and happily lets them believe so until they slip up. And in High Potential, Kaitlin Olson’s civilian consultant looks like the least authoritative person in the precinct, even as her mind is racing several steps ahead of the officers around her.

In each case, the gap between how these women are perceived and what they can actually do becomes an investigative tool in its own right.

The kind of intelligence these shows prize is different, too. In the vintage procedural, the decisive moment usually arrived through brute force: a lung-straining chase down the street, a slammed fist in the interrogation room, the perp finally 'fessing up under pressure. In newer ones, the breakthrough often comes from something quieter – a slip of the tongue, a glance that lingers too long, the behavioural tell that gives the game away.

In Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson solves cases partly because she understands the trauma and psychology of survivors. In the now cruelly cancelled Poker Face, Natasha Lyonne’s drifter detective has a flair for spotting incriminatory lies.

Scarpetta adds yet another kind of authority into the mix. Where traditional detectives probed suspects, she interrogates the body itself, reconstructing a victim’s final moments through forensic science. Her authority stems not from intimidation, but from her ability to clock evidence everyone else has missed.

Read more:

• What to watch on streaming: today's picks from Netflix, Prime Video and more
• Patricia Cornwell talks Scarpetta finally making it to the screen and her surprise cameo: "I was so overwhelmed"

It’s a further sign of how the modern procedural hero is governed less by toughness than by perspective. What draws us in isn’t a stand-off or showdown – it’s the pleasure of watching a particular kind of mind spark to life.

None of this happened overnight, of course. Earlier series such as The Closer, which starred Kyra Sedgwick, or Veronica Mars, with Kristen Bell, demonstrated long ago that viewers would embrace female investigators who approached detection in unconventional ways.

Even further back, Cagney and Lacey proved how magnetic, credible female cops could be as the focus of a serious drama.

What feels different now is that such characters no longer seem unusual or the exceptions. They’re becoming the genre’s defining figures.

Which makes the release of Scarpetta seem all the timelier. After more than 30 years in the bestseller charts, she finally steps into a more liberated television landscape that feels primed for her – one where the procedural is no longer dominated by a single male model of detective, but open to a wide range of minds capable of bringing criminals to justice.

All episodes of Scarpetta are available from Wednesday 11 March on Amazon Prime Video. Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Prime Video and pay £8.99 a month after that.

Add Scarpetta to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.