David Bianculli

I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.

Benicio Del Toro speaking to Tanya Mosley last year.

He's nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in One Battle After Another.

The Academy Awards are scheduled to be held Sunday and televised by ABC.

Coming up, I review Nicole Kidman's newest TV project, Scarpetta, the prime video series based on the series of novels by Patricia Cornwell.

This is Fresh Air.

Nicole Kidman is an executive producer of, as well as the main star of, Scarpetta, the new eight-part mystery series now streaming in its entirety on Prime Video.

She plays Virginia medical examiner Kay Scarpetta.

But in this ambitiously structured drama, Kidman isn't the only one playing her.

This narrative unfolds as two different mysteries from two different timelines and shifts between them like cards being shuffled in a deck.

One timeline, in the present, has Kidman as Kay returning to her old job after a long time off and instantly faced with a baffling set of murders.

The other timeline, from decades earlier in 1998, shows a younger Kay taking the job as chief medical examiner for the first time, and being hit with a serial murder case then, too.

In these scenes from the past, Kay is played by a different actress, Rosie McEwen, who matches Kidman's mannerisms and demeanor perfectly.

It's a high-wire balancing act, also required of almost all the other young actors who managed to mirror their more mature counterparts convincingly and entertainingly.

And that's not an easy task, because the actors in the current timeline are major players, delivering excellent, wide-ranging performances.

Jamie Lee Curtis plays Kay's flamboyant sister Dorothy, author of a popular series of children's books.

Bobby Cannavale plays plain-speaking, quick-tempered homicide detective Pete Marino.

And Simon Baker plays cerebral FBI profiler Benton Wesley.

All of these movie stars have done exceptionally well on television.

Baker on The Mentalist, Cannavale on Boardwalk Empire, Jamie Lee Curtis on The Bear, and Nicole Kidman in a string of small-screen triumphs, including Nine Perfect Strangers, The Perfect Couple, and Big Little Lies.