TV Review: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | Oz and James Drink to Britain

Published on Tuesday 13 January 2009 19:08

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Five Oz and James Drink to Britain, BBC2

PREVIOUSLY on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, season eight climaxed with a shocking cliffhanger, as much-loved officer Warrick Brown was fatally gunned down by a crooked cop.

This was an incident of such terrible import that it warranted extensive use of slow-motion, melodramatic hymnal chanting on the soundtrack, and CSI boss Gil Grissom shouting things like: "Oh God! Stay with me, Warrick! I need you to fight for me!"

I'll freely admit that the only reason I know any of this is thanks to the prologue at the beginning of this season nine opener. Suffice to say, I am not a dedicated follower of this interminable franchise. In fact, in the nine years it's been on I must've only half-watched three or four whole episodes. It's a remarkably liberating feeling.

Created by blockbuster schlock-meister Jerry Bruckheimer, CSI and its spin-offs, CSI: Miami and CSI: NY , are apparently some of the most popular TV series in the world, and yet I've never met a single person who watches them. Maybe their fans all live in underground tunnels. Or they're invisible. Those are the only rational explanations.

Why do people watch this stuff? After all, it has been scientifically proven that human beings, and British viewers in particular, only really need to be caught up in approximately three long-running US television programmes at any given time.

So given how little time we actually have on this planet, may I strongly recommend that you become addicted to the likes of 24 , Dexter and especially The Wire rather than anything fronted by the letters C, S and I.

Imagine going to your grave having watched more than 100 hours of David Caruso putting his sunglasses on.

In fact, once you've absorbed The Wire – a cops and robbers drama of such momentous depth, soul and ambition that it almost beggars belief – then any other show operating in a vaguely similar vein seems worthless by comparison.

To be fair, CSI has no pretensions beyond being a wilfully unrealistic, formulaic cop show. Which is fine. It's just that I have little need in my life for wilfully unrealistic, formulaic cop shows. Why waste time on cardboard characters, clichd dialogue, cheap sentiment and empty visuals? There is so much on television to enjoy, very little of which involves fake forensic experts skulking around in moodily lit laboratories.

In any case, it's plainly evident that the only reason CSI and its imported offspring exist is to plug large gaps in Five's evening schedules. The channel would literally collapse without them – it'd be like removing all the screws from an Ikea wall unit.

Prior to watching Oz and James Drink to Britain, I'd never noticed that grog aficionado Oz Clarke possesses a voice as rich and yeasty as a foaming pint of nutmeg ale. It's a voice that should be recording talking book versions of the collected works of Rudyard Kipling, rather than grumbling about how Newcastle Brown doesn't taste as good as it used to.

He and his drinking buddy, James May of Top Gear fame, look like a talking walnut and an ageing member of Level 42, which lends this extended, booze-sodden jolly the air of a sub-par Vic and Bob skit.

It's one of those undemanding travelogues in which supposedly amiable presenters wander the country pretending to have good-natured arguments. It is, I suppose, just a bit of fun, or blokeish drivel of the beigest hue, depending on your tolerance for this sort of thing.