 Starring: William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger, George Eads, Gary Dourdan, Jorja Fox
Director: Various
Year Of Release: 2000-2001
Plot: Set in the Las Vegas Crime Lab, Gil Grissom and his team of forensics experts use all their science skills to investigate murders and catch the culprit. Using the latest technical expertise, as well as a lot of deductive logic, the team always have a trick up their sleeves to get to the truth. |
Crime has been on TV for a long time. Almost since they first started beaming pictures through the air, death and destruction were being pumped into people’s living rooms. While other genres see peaks and troughs in popularity, it seems people never get tired of death, whether it’s the silly antics of ‘Murder, She Wrote’ or the gritty investigations of ‘Homicide: Life On The Street’. Recently one franchise has stood proudly above all others when it comes to crime, CSI, but what is it that’s made it, and shows like it, so successful?
There is one simple reason why the crime show has always been a good bet, and that’s the fact that irrespective of class, creed or religion, death levels us all. It’s the reason why in many crime series we never get to see much of the investigators private lives. They are beyond class or race and only exist to solve crimes. It’s been argued that this is essentially the function murder investigation series serve. They are cathartic, in that at the beginning everything is fine, then the world goes out of whack and societal rules break down, however the investigators come in and restore the social norms.
While many series have relied on the cop who’ll break the rules to get things done and who has no time for authority, it’s still a deeply conservative genre. From Quincy to Kojak, it’s all about putting things back the way they should be and restoring the status quo. It’s why despite the fact they deal with the sort of things we would normally find repellent and horrible, watching a murder get solved in these shows is oddly comforting. You know that by the end they’ll have caught the person responsible, justice will have been done and everything will be fine. It therefore serves a very basic need in all of us, to feel protected. While not realistic at all (not least in the fact that comparatively, crime show cops solve a lot more murders than in real life, unfortunately), they make you feel the world’s a safer place by showing you that even when everything goes tits up, someone will come in and restore order.
This is even more true of today’s murder mysteries than it’s ever been. If you look back at the likes of Agatha Christie, the whole crux of the case rested on who did it. Miss Marple didn’t actually do much, other than be nosy and overhear things and even Poirot’s private detecting was purely the foreplay before he got people in a room and announced a name. However things are very different now, with the investigation having come to the fore. Led by CSI, prominence is now firmly given not only to the whos and whys, but also how you find out. In CSI, it’s all about how you can use science to set the world to rights and dispense justice. Oftentimes the actual collaring of the criminal seems a bit of an afterthought.
It’s slightly surprising how little humans actually matter in these series. While most shows go to great lengths to show their characters as real people, with problems and love lives, the more modern breed of crime drama has rather dispensed with this. Take the original CSI and its main character, Gil Grissom. What do we actually know about him? Very little. His mother was deaf, he likes insects and riding roller coasters and he hates bureaucracy. And that’s about it, which is an impressively small amount. Even his romance with Sara Sidle was slightly tacked on for the sake of it.
In the real world Gil would be seen as a social misfit, who was a workaholic and had debilitating intimacy issues, but in CSI all these things are a benefit as they keep him focussed on following the evidence. Indeed, the only times characters personal lives are mentioned is when they threaten to undermine their ability to solve crimes. Warrick’s gambling addiction meant he was betting when he should be working, Sara was almost undone by alcohol and Capt. Brass’ tearaway daughter has seen him almost abandoning the truth in order to help her.
Perhaps most interesting is Catherine Willows. Early on she undoubtedly had the most prominent private life in CSI, with a daughter, dodgy casino-boss father, an ex-husband and shady past as a stripper. While it was initially the ex-husband who caused the major problems in getting between her and her ability to do her job, he was bumped off fairly early on. Then the main tension became between mother and daughter. You would expect the show to promote a healthy work/life balance, or at least to make you feel that Catherine was making some horrific compromises by working more than she should. However, while not done explicitly, you often get the feeling CSI is blaming the daughter for getting in the way.
In CSI solving crime with science comes first and anyone who doesn’t understand that better get out of the way. In the fifth season episode ‘Harvest’, Catherine’s daughter is discovered hitch-hiking despite barely being a teenager. While you might expect the show to place the responsibility on Catherine for never being around and turning her daughter into a rebel, the emphasis is on how Lindsay’s the problem, especially as it neatly echoes the main kidnapping plot. Why can’t she just accept her mother’s job is more important than she is and stop getting in the way?
And here’s a quick quiz. Of the main characters in all three CSI series, how many are currently married? None. In fact even if people do get hitched, it’s barely mentioned. When Warrick got married and then divorced in CSI, his changing marital status was mentioned in only five episodes. Horatio Cane in CSI: Miami managed to meet a woman, get married and have his wife murdered in less than half a season. To be honest several other characters could be married, but it’s quite feasible it would never be mentioned as their personal lives are so irrelevant. It’s probably Mac Taylor in CSI:NY who has the most dramatic excuse for his lack of a personal life, as his wife died on September 11th, although he did briefly get a surrogate son in the form of a teenager his wife had given up for adoption, but even that was quickly forgotten.
Although the majority of both film and TV detectives have tended to be single, it’s still surprising that a franchise has become so popular that prizes people who seem to have so little in their lives other than work. In fact it lauds them for it.
However these character are not robots. It’s actually a testament to the skills of both the actors and performers in all three CSI series that they still seem human despite the fact that on the surface, they never do anything except collect DNA, dowse things with luminol and do ballistics reports. However through performance and dialogue they bring these things to life. It’s why the science seems so exciting, as in CSI the characters’ humanity is revealed through their dedication to the truth. Wives, children and personal lives would distract from what is the central spine of the series.
And they are without a doubt successful. A decade on from its first series, CSI remains one of the 10 most watched programmes on US TV, while for the last few years, CSI: Miami has been lauded as the most watched programme around the globe, appearing in more top 10 ratings charts from different countries than any other show.
While it is undoubtedly true that a lot of the CSI franchise’s success is down to strong casts and interesting plots, you can’t help but feel their real trick is to have gone back to a very simple formula. In fact it’s very similar to the way the original modern detective, Sherlock Holmes, worked. The audience doesn’t just get its satisfaction from finding out who did it, they want to know exactly how the investigators got there. By providing a series of steps, CSI provides a simple yet psychologically satisfying way for the audience to feel that no matter how screwed up things gets, the seemingly impartial world of science can sort it out.
Art Imitates Life
As an aside, it’s worth mentioning that prosecutors are having a problem in the US. They say that because of the popularity of CSI, juries now often expect a level of forensic evidence they simply can’t provide. In order for each episode of CSI to have forward momentum, there’s always plenty of usable evidence at crime scenes, from fingerprints to DNA, which they can use to get their man and tie them to the crime. In real life things are a little trickier. For a start, while in CSI they seem to be able to get a DNA profile in minutes, in real life it can take weeks. It’s also true that the CSI techs always seem certain a random hair found on a body must have come from the killer, but there’s often no way of proving that. In reality there’s often nothing to definitively forensically link a defendant to a crime (there often isn’t in CSI either, but they use sleight of hand to make it look like there is), but juries are now coming to expect it.
As a result of this many are worried that juries are starting to find people not guilty because they have unrealistic expectations, with many viewers not even realising that some of the machines and techniques used on the show are currently only at the theoretical stage. While it’s difficult to say whether the threat is real or imagined, there’s no doubt that whether fair or not, CSI has put the pressure on prosecutors to get the evidence.
However it’s not only with juries that the CSI effect is being felt. Some forensic scientists have suggested that there’s been an increase in criminals knowing how to get rid of evidence and using more sophisticated techniques to cover their tracks, having picked up tips from CSI and other shows. For example LA criminalist Tammy Klein has reported a wider use of bleach to try to destroy DNA.
Others feel that this effect has been overstated and that the real message of the show is that no matter what you try to do, you can still be caught and convicted.
TIM ISAAC
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