I watch a LOT of television, or to be more accurate, I watch an awful lot of television series but I watch them mostly on dvd so I don't catch any of those pesky advert things. Generally I watch the American stuff although I've recently picked up a few more UK series which seem to be adopting the similar production values. I'll watch pretty much anything that doesn't involve members of the public or celebrities, although I tend not to watch sitcoms either at the moment.

CSI: Miami: 1x01 - 1x12

I'd not seen most of these episodes, having only caught the occasional episode on tv and just not really getting into it as much as the original series. On the positive side Miami definately makes itself an independent series, bringing the ethos of csi but a completely different attitude towards things both in story and in production. For some reason though, it just doesn't seem to work as well.

This series is definately the day to CSI's night, the scenary is gorgeous and the cinematography makes the most of it and getting the csi's off night-shift is definately a good plan. The mixtures of cultures and politics is also an interesting change to the more temporary nature of residents in Las Vegas. I think the main place the whole thing suffers is in the characters, particularly it's leading man. Horatio Caine ain't no Gil Grissom, in fact he's quite obviously supposed to be about as opposite as you can get - he gets personally involved in *everything*, follows instincts even if the evidence is telling him otherwise and comes from a policing background (bomb squad) rather than science. The only thing he seems to have in common with Grissom is his patronising attitude towards the rest of the team. Said team splits pretty neatly into the quirky and the vanilla, with most of the women getting the quirks with the men left to follow them around. Calleigh the bullet girl is all southern and perky while Alexx the coroner is the mother of anything with or without a pulse. Meanwhile Delko bumbles around being the young guy and Speedle just seems entirely bored by the whole thing. I thuoght the character of Megan was kinda interesting (and it looks like they're picking up the murdered spouse theme for CSI: New York) but could never work out where she stood with Horatio, I'm guessing the producers couldn't either, hence her departure. I think the producers really need to work on their male characters, it's not like Nick and Warwick are particularly fascinating either and wouldn't it be nice to see a male character who's married and has a family?

Story wise the plots are on a par with CSI, with the corresponding highs and lows. My frustrations for the most part are independent of the plot but focussed on the way Horatio leads the team through it. Some of the episodes do seem to suffer from raining red herring syndrome and I'm fairly sure there were a couple of ends not securely fastened in a couple of places. But they're enjoyable to watch even if I can't actually think of any that stand out.

Special Features: The packaging is a standard foldout wallet inside a plastic sleeve, nicely matching the show's bright and light feel. The 2 mini-documentaries are interesting, particularly the one that talks about how to make the show distinctive but still part of the franchise. The commentary on the pilot is vaguely intersting although hardly rivetting. Further commentaries would have been nice as would a bit more depth on the commentaries, but for a limitted offering, it covers all the bases.

Television Series