Crime Scene Abomination

CSI: Las Vegas - Crime Scene Investigation (Nine Network)

What is it with CSI?

Given the seemingly endless global proliferation of the franchise, no doubt the good citizens of rural Victoria are preparing for the cameras to roll on CSI: Warrnambool - but it is the origin of the species that I speak of here. CSI: Las Vegas.

I'm sorry. I simply cannot watch it any more.

The acting is amateur-standard and overblown, the scripts cliched and melodramatic, the plotlines frequently ridiculous, and - most infuriatingly of all - the series relies for its impact not on traditional dramatic elements such as plot or characterisation, but on a liberal display of gore to which the counterpoint is a prevailing attitude of world-weariness from the principal players. This mass disembowellment of a middle class family in their own home sure is shocking, but hey, I'm with the Las Vegas CSI team, and I'm far too experienced to be shocked by any of this.

Splashing the screen with blood and bodies is the bluntest of blunt instuments with which to bludgeon an undemanding audience.

CSI's other tried'n'true technique is a regular-as-clockwork weekly piece of technical whizzbangery in which the viewer is televisually thrust through a victim or killer's arteries, intestines, brain, or alimentary canal to disclose the scientific detail behind the CSI team's breakthroughs. It's Hollywood special effects at its small-screen best, but, for all its dazzlement, it can't blind us to the shortcomings of the rest of the show.

We are meant to believe that police forensic scientists routinely pack weapons and interrogate suspects. The reality is that the people CSI glorifies are more often nerdy, bespectacled scientists who provide technical information to real police, who then do the actual crimefighting.

But that would make CSI just another cop show.

Can anyone take Gus Grissom seriously? This pasty lardarse struts around in shades, quoting classical literature and dropping what the scriptwriters evidently consider to be heavily ironic remarks about morality and the woeful state of the world in general. He is the sort of person you would duck into a broom closet to avoid if you saw him in the corridor at work.

His supporting cast includes two females, one young and one old, both of whom are readily interchangeable. They are evidently modelled on Sgt Pepper Anderson, circa 1973, from Policewoman - but they lack the depth of character.

Then there are the men - one black, one white, both painful. All the team members are unarguably good guys without any personality flaws. Oh, the black guy had a gambling problem once, but that's pretty much it.

Backing up this sorry assortment is - and here's a surprise - the veteran hardnosed cop. Bad haircut, unfashionable clothes, etc. You know the drill.

Yet CSI is a global phenomenon, which has spawned a clutch of identical shows differing only in location. There is endless potential to clone the program. Its popularity is unquestionable. But I'm happy to mark myself out in this case as different from the tens of millions of fans who love the show. However faint your voice in the wilderness, sometimes you just have to take a stand against mediocrity. Or, in this case, against trash.