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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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What to watch on streaming: today's picks from Netflix, Prime Video and morePatricia 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.
View Green Video on the source websiteEven further back, Cagney and Lacey proved how magnetic, credible female cops could be as the focus of a serious drama.
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.
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