If you think Las Vegas and Miami have provided enough “CSI,” consider one Monday night last May.
CBS used an episode of “CSI: Miami” to preview “CSI: NY,” just as the network did in 2002 with parent show “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” in spinning off “CSI: Miami.” The results were huge by today’s broadcast-TV standards, drawing more than 23 million viewers — so viewers seem ready for more forensic detective work as “CSI: NY” gets its official start Wednesday on CBS.
In his series debut, renowned screen and stage actor Gary Sinise (“Forrest Gump,” “Apollo 13”) becomes the Big Apple counterpart to the earlier series’ William Petersen and David Caruso by playing police detective Mack Taylor, who leads another team in analyzing homicide evidence and looking for more clues in unusual places. Melina Kanakaredes (“Providence”) returns to weekly work as his partner, Stella Bonasera; Hill Harper (“The Handler”), Vanessa Ferlito, Eddie Cahill (“Friends”) and Carmine Giovinazzo round out the new “CSI” squad.
Once “CSI: Miami” got off to a healthy start while “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” continued to rack up giant ratings, it was little surprise CBS wanted a third edition of executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s franchise. “CSI” creator and fellow executive producer Anthony Zuiker recalls that at a dinner with several of the network’s executives, CBS programming chief (and current Viacom co-COO) Leslie Moonves “looked over at me and said, ‘We all know why we’re here, Anthony.’ It came together relatively quickly with my producing partners, Carol Mendelsohn and Ann Donahue. We sat down and said, ‘How do we do this again?’ “
A big part of the process was securing Sinise to head the cast. “I hadn’t necessarily been looking for a series role,” the Emmy-winning star of such TV projects as “George Wallace” and “Truman” says, “but when Les Moonves contacted me about it, then I sat down with Anthony, it all started to make good sense. For me, this is the right thing at the right time. It’s a great ensemble cast. Having come from the theater company (Chicago’s Steppenwolf, which Sinise co-founded), I worked for years and years with the same people. This is going to be great.”
Also happy to be aboard “CSI: NY,” arguably the surest bet for hit status of any new fall show, Kanakaredes has no worries about any potential for the trio of “CSI” series to collide. “I have two kids and they come from the same parents, but they’re different,” she reasons. “I think it’s the same thing with these three shows.”
Although the “CSI: Miami” episode that introduced “CSI: NY” was filmed mainly on location, the new show is headquartered in California like its predecessors. Zuiker reports scenes for several episodes already have been shot on the East Coast: “We plan to go to New York probably three or four times a year, and also send some splinter-type crews there to do some shooting. We love the city — it’s very hard to duplicate, and we understand that — but a lot of us have families rooted in Las Vegas or California.” Thus, Zuiker concluded being in New York full-time “just wasn’t practical for us.”
