David Bianculli

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.

When Nicole and Jamie Lee share the screen, which is often, it's incendiary.

As youngsters, Kay witnessed their father's death during a robbery, one of many differences between the two sisters.

Scarpetta is based on a series of novels by best-selling author Patricia Cornwell, who's written 29 stories to date built around Kay Scarpetta.

The modern parts of this first season story, a follow-up second season already has been ordered, are inspired by Autopsy, the 25th book in her series.

The murder mystery set in the past is from Cornwell's very first Scarpetta novel, Postmortem, from 1990.

Liz Sarnoff, the writer-producer who developed this for television, combines them both in a format that demands close attention, but rewards it too.

Sarnoff, working with a pool of directors and other writers, delivers solid mysteries in both storylines, as well as an intriguing subplot involving emotional dependence on an AI-generated personality.

But it's the characters, not the clues, that make Scarpetta so captivating.

The veteran actors are rock-solid.

Bobby Cannavale, especially, is terrific.

And so are their younger counterparts.

In one bit of very effective casting, the younger version of Cannavale's detective, Pete Marino, is played by the actor's own son, Jake.

Here he is in a scene where the younger Kay, played by Rosie McEwen, interrupts homicide detective Pete and the younger FBI profiler Benton, played by Hunter Parrish.

They're discussing the profile of their suspected killer, and Pete is a lot less enamored of all the hypotheticals than his colleagues.