Actresses of a certain age are henceforth barred from investigating crimes on TV. Ma’am, we’re going to need your badge.

The latest to take up an insignia is Nicole Kidman, star of Prime Video’s new eight-part Patricia Cornwell adaptation, Scarpetta. Flinty-eyed, elegant, and as poised as Fremiet’s Jeanne d’Arc, Kidman radiates the inscrutable confidence of a blackjack dealer showing “10” or an elk prancing blithely through Yellowstone. Watching the Oscar winner’s turn as Cornwell’s 29-novel heroine, one is not so much unconvinced as unexcited. What personal demons will impede the hunt for a killer? What C-list scene-mate awaits Kidman’s character at home? We might not yet know the relevant answers, but the questions themselves are about as fresh as break-room coffee.