From what I've seen, a lot of shows select the focus characters, and it's very often the detectives or the bad guy or the families more than the victim. I've seen countless shows where we know almost nothing of the victim or the victim's life, much less their POV. They are often even completely anonymous. It's always a conscious choice of which characters they focus on. In this show, it was Nicole Kidman mostly, with considerable Hugh Grant. The focus was on a psychologist married to a sociopath capable of murder and how she comes to realize that. I think we were robbed, to a large extent, of the horror of that dawning realization from Nicole since her face could not emote.
In any case, I wish we had known Elena better, because they had her do some curious and unexpected things, but then never filled in any rich characterization. But they were like that about a lot of things, including Nicole's character. "I walk a lot at night wearing beautiful coats," is not a well-developed character.