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Date Posted: 14:55:56 09/26/05 Mon
Author: Islandgirl
Subject:

Article on mystery/crime TV shows

Found this while surfing the 'net. Comments from me at the end:
********
Drowning in a sea of 'CSI'
Here's a lifeline for viewers of all the law-and-order dramas

Sept. 26, 2005 12:00 AM
While the new television season has gotten plenty of attention for all its Lost-inspired science-fiction and fantasy-themed dramas, the truth is that criminal procedurals still make up the bulk of the schedule.
They're the shows that, despite increasingly violent and twisted crimes, almost always wrap up each case at the end of the episode in a nice (though sometimes less than tidy) little bow.
They've been around forever - Mannix and Kojak always got their man, and Starsky and Hutch didn't sit around in a self-tortured state wondering whether their friendship with Huggy Bear was appropriate. advertisement
Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue ushered in an era in which cop shows didn't always end with the bad guy in handcuffs - and the cops sometimes were the bad guys. Those groundbreaking shows took several episodes - seasons, sometimes - to tell their stories.
But with the stunning success of shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its spinoffs, the pendulum swung back a few seasons ago. Now you can get your good-guys-catch-bad-guy fix almost every night of the week.
But should you? We offer an opinionated survey of which procedurals aren't worth your while, and which you might find, uh, arresting:

��CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - 9 p.m. Thursdays on Channel 5 (KPHO): The 800-pound gorilla, one of the most influential television shows in years, and one of the most curiously overrated. Best of the CSI lot, for what that's worth. Still, the stilted acting from such usually trustworthy sorts as William Peterson and Marg Helgenberger, combined with gee-whiz science and special effects, leads to an oddly soulless viewing experience.

��CSI: Miami - 9 p.m. Mondays on Channel 5 (KPHO): Also known as the "David Caruso Show." If there is one thing you can count on, other than the CSI-trademark effects and gross-out investigations, it is, at some point in every episode, Caruso standing in front of palm trees and a Miami sunset, arrogantly telling a suspect how he caught him. Big tough guy, him.

��CSI: NY - 9 p.m. Wednesdays on Channel 5 (KPHO): All the promise in the world to become the best of the CSIs, but something went wrong. In a break from tradition, we were supposed to learn a little more about Gary Sinese's character's life, but that never happened. Instead, he and Melina Kanakaredes are just as wooden as the other CSI actors. Everything is always dark in this NYC, though it's supposed to lighten up this season, in tone and look. Certainly can't hurt.

��Law & Order - 9 p.m. Wednesdays on Channel 12 (KPNX): Granddaddy of the current boom and on rare occasions still the best. There was a time, many years and cast changes ago, when it was one of the top shows on TV. Remember Paul Sorvino? Nutty Michael Moriarty? Now it's just playing out the string creatively. Lost its water-cooler buzz a long time ago, and that's a tough thing to get back.

��Law & Order: SVU - 9 p.m. Tuesdays on Channel 12 (KPNX): Maybe the best of the Law & Orders these days - Mariska Hargitay has become a regular on the Emmy-nominee list - but man, is it dark. Since it's about a unit investigating sex crimes, that's not a surprise, but still. Tough to stomach. On the lighter side, at least it's got Richard Belzer.

��Law & Order: Criminal Intent - 8 p.m. Sundays on Channel 12 (KPNX): You can look at this show in two ways. One, it's a star vehicle for Vincent D'Onofrio, who plays some sort of genius detective and appears in almost every scene, solving the crime by his wits. Or it's the most hilariously overacted role on television, a real scream. Let's go with the latter.

��Crossing Jordan - 9 p.m. Sundays on Channel 12 (KPNX): You want derivative? When it premi�red, the derisive nickname for this show, which stars Jill Hennessy as a medical examiner who solves crimes - why not? - was "SheSI." We do see more of her character's personal life than is usual in this kind of show, not always necessarily a good thing.

��Cold Case - 7 p.m. Sundays on Channel 5 (KPHO): Katherine Morris stars as a Philadelphia cop who solves murders committed years ago. Two things going for it, in addition to Morris, who's good: the flashback scenes with younger actors playing characters back when the crime was committed and an unusually good use of period music. Above average.

��NCIS - 7 p.m. Tuesdays on Channel 5 (KPHO): A sort-of spinoff of CSI, but much more enjoyable. Mark Harmon leads a group of naval investigators. Same blueprint as the original, but with a lot more humor. One of TV's most underrated shows.

��Bones - 7 p.m. Tuesdays on Channel 10 (KSAZ): David Boreanaz is an FBI agent; Emily Deschanel a forensic anthropologist. Together they solve crimes, naturally. The must-have high-tech gizmo is a holographic doodad that shows what a victim might look like if they had more than bones to go on. Pretty cool. Better than most.

��Criminal Minds - 8 p.m. Wednesdays on Channel 5 (KPHO): Mandy Patinkin stars as a damaged FBI behavioral analyst who leads a team that specializes in particularly gruesome crimes, of which, this being TV, there are a gracious plenty. Better than that sounds, largely because the usually scene-hogging Patinkin is more muted here.

��Without a Trace - 9 p.m. Thursdays on Channel 5 (KPHO): Best of them all. For one thing, the FBI team here is looking for people who have gone missing, not solving murders, so we're spared the by-now de rigueur grisly autopsies. For another, Anthony LaPaglia is perfectly cast as the team's leader. It's a good combo.

��Numb3rs - 9 p.m. Fridays on Channel 5 (KPHO): Yet more FBI doings. The twist here is that Rob Morrow, who plays an FBI agent, allows his math-genius brother (David Krumholtz) to tag along and solve crimes using numbers and theorems and whatnot. Not great, but their chemistry is decent. More fun than trigonometry class, anyway.

��Killer Instinct - 8 p.m. Fridays on Channel 10 (KSAZ): Really ugly, really bad. Johnny Messner stars as a cop who investigates deviant crimes - are there no garden-variety ones anywhere on television? - and whose partner was killed, making him even more dour than usual. Sorry. Life's too short as it is.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8974.

******

I haven't seen all of these shows, but I agree with her assessments on all the ones I have seen: NCIS is way underrated, Cold Case is above average, Bones is pretty cool and the best thing about Numb3rs is the brother-bonding.

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Re: Article on mystery/crime TV shows -- CW, 06:40:23 09/29/05 Thu