Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1403 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-07-01
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Number of discs: 3
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 513 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The latest in a long line of successful US police dramas, the forensic cop show Crime Scene Investigation varies the formula by focusing on a team of civilian scientists who work the night shift in Las Vegas, poring over crime scenes for fingerprints, blood spatters, DNA-laced mucus and (especially) maggots.

Star William Petersen plays a variation of his role from Manhunter, the cool puzzle-solving genius who can rattle off mystifying speeches with aplomb, while his contrasting partner is Marg Helgenberger, cast as a single mother/ex-stripper who is as concerned with the emotional as well as the physical mess left by crime.

While most US cop shows (witness NYPD Blue) tend towards soap, neglecting the cases in favour of personal crises, CSI gives its regulars enough life to make them human but is essentially puzzle-based, with individual episodes following two or three cases à la Homicide: Life on the Street. The occasional special focuses on a major job with the team investigating the slaughter of a whole family ("Blood Drops") or a death in first class on a plane over Vegas ("Unfriendly Skies"). A few continuing threads are laid down, with a recurrent villain who gets away, but will inevitably return, but on the whole these shows play pretty well as one-offs. Very high-tech in style, with lots of zooms into microscopic examinations of hair follicles or stomach contents and distinctive visualisations of the different stories told by witnesses and evidence, this is one of the best shows currently airing.

On the DVD: CSI's first DVD box set contains the show's first 12 episodes: the pilot followed by "Cool Change", "Crate & Burial", "Pledging Mr Johnson"; "Friends and Lovers", "Who Are You?", "Blood Drops"; "Anonymous", "Unfriendly Skies", "Sex Lies and Larvae"; "The I-15 Murders" and "Fahrenheit 932". In addition to inventive menus, the three-disc set offers character profiles, a trailer, some B-roll on-set footage, a subtitle option, and snippet-like interviews with the cast and creatives. --Kim Newman

Special Features
Cast and Crew interviews
Trailer
Character Profiles
Behind the Scenes footage
Dolby 2.0
Subtitles: English

Synopsis
This astoundingly popular and highly acclaimed television series focuses on a team of police forsenic experts in Las Vegas. Deadpan investigator Gil Grissom (William L. Petersen) is joined by Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger), a fiery former stripper, and other intriguing characters as they search crime scenes and employ remarkable techniques to determine what happened and, in many cases, who was responsible for the crime--most often murder. The collection presents the first 12 episodes of season one.