News

jaryan@globeandmail.com

If there really is a sucker born every minute, count on most of them growing up to be CSI fans.

The typical CSI devotee has long ago bought into the romantic notion of forensic geniuses solving horrific crimes, which is just fine with me and completely acceptable viewer behaviour, except that no one seems to care that the fantasy never changes. Never.

Escapism is endemic to all levels of television - even the news - but the accepted network standard is that every respectable TV drama should ideally mature, presumably along with its audience. Instead, the CSI franchise plods along, same as it ever was, and each show runs together like an extended blur of tweezers, test tubes and splayed corpses, interrupted by the occasional scene of dialogue between Prada-wearing lab technicians.

The only cause for alarm: CSI remains the most successful franchise on network television and still no signs of evolution. Any new episode of the original CSI, currently into its 10th season, is virtually indistinguishable from the first season, except that Laurence Fishburne now seems to be the ad hoc version of Gil Grissom.

Likewise for CSI: New York, now in year six, which shrewdly cast film actor Gary Sinise as the show's lead crime-scene investigator Mac Taylor: Sinise already had dark circles beneath his eyes when he started the series and he still does today. Poking at stiffs in the Big Apple takes its toll.

But the most egregious offender remains CSI: Miami (CBS, CTV, 10 p.m.), still riding high in the ratings in season eight and still requiring the viewing public to accept David Caruso as a believable heroic figure. How did a garden gnome ever become TV's top cop?

By now, Caruso's portrayal of lead investigator Horatio Caine has become a crinkly sun-baked caricature, courtesy of Caruso's one-note acting technique. The Caruso Method: Squint, scowl, deliver half a line of dialogue, turn head to the left, put on shades, finish the line looking directly at the camera. Fade to commercial.

And, besides the fact that Horatio still insists on wearing black suits in the blazing Florida sun, the CSI: Miami plotlines, then and now, consistently beggar the imagination.

On tonight's new episode, Horatio and his CSI stalwarts decide to re-enact a wild-and-crazy bachelor party that somehow resulted in both a bloody murder and a missing groom. How often does that happen in the real world? As television drama goes, Miami Vice had more credible stories.

The real drudging, procedural work of forensic science is far better represented in the new documentary The Mystery of the Floating Feet on The Passionate Eye (CBC News Network, 10 p.m.). The title may suggest a Hardy Boys novella, but the program presents a grim treatise on the forensic side of an ongoing police investigation.

You know the case we're talking about, because you read this newspaper, or watch the TV news. Since the summer of 2007, seven severed feet in running sneakers have washed up in different locations along British Columbia waterways; in fact, an eighth foot washed up only last week, which, let's be blunt, is probably terrific promotion for this documentary.

As shown in the film, the bizarre discoveries have pushed most known forms of forensic science to its limit. Through 2007 and most of the following year, the feet kept turning up. The case went to the RCMP's major crimes division and then began the painstaking process of trying to find the identity of each missing foot's owner.

First, the feet are taken to the city of Vancouver's general morgue. An autopsy of feet is incapable of revealing cause of death, so the feet are then examined by a forensic anthropologist, who discovers there are no blade marks, hence the feet were not severed, despite the lurid media headlines to the contrary.

That's how the investigation goes, shifting from one branch of exacting modern science to the next. DNA is extracted from bone fragments and matched against missing-persons lists in B.C. and beyond. The feet are examined by a forensic entomologist, a forensic anthropologist and a forensic botanist. An oceanography expert conducts an extremely precise experiment on the Fraser River in hopes of determining the departure point of the missing feet.

On every level, the investigation involves thorough, methodical scientific process. And unlike the fanciful world of Horatio Caine, the case is not wrapped up in the final 10 minutes. The mystery of the floating feet remains a mystery. Just this once, skip CSI: Miami and watch the real thing.

Check local listings.

John Doyle returns tomorrow.

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Also airing tonight

American Experience (PBS, 9 p.m.) continues with its theme of the 1930s. Tonight's show recalls the era of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was created in 1933 by President Franklin Roosevelt to counter the problem of millions of people out of work. For roughly a decade, more than three-million American males, aged 18 to 25, were put to work, and paid $30 a month. By day, they planted trees, landscaped parks, constructed flood barriers and built roads and trails; by night, some learned to read and others picked up a trade.

Kate: Her Story (TLC, 9 p.m.) is the latest in TLC's ongoing effort to make viewers fall in love with Kate Gosselin and forget all about whatshisname. Following up on last week's special, You Ask, Kate Answers, in which Gosselin responded to viewer queries, tonight's program has her sitting down with NBC reporter Natalie Morales to discuss exactly the same topics - heartbreak, life in the media glare, hairstyles, that sort of thing. A.R.