Blood and guts all in a day's work on CSI

By CATHRIN SCHAER

The more gore, the better. So say the audiences of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. "Sometimes even I am astonished at what they get away with," says Marg Helgenberger, who plays forensic scientist and single mother, Catherine Willows. "I mean, we've had severed heads, trips down dead people's chests and all kinds of other stuff."

In her role, Helgenberger is part of a team of crime scene investigators working in Las Vegas. Willows and company don't punch or shoot the bad guys. Rather they get a warrant for their toenails.

But violence and sleaze are not forgotten. The show comes complete with lurid flashbacks and gruesome detail that American viewers are not gagging at, but for.

In the United States it's been the hit of the season, out-rating competing shows such as Friends and Will & Grace. It even toppled the second series opener of The West Wing. In New Zealand it's also proving popular.

Says creator and co-executive producer Anthony Zuiker: "The hero [of the show] is the evidence. A toenail, a hair follicle, a teardrop, those kinds of things. It's very cool."

Adds William Petersen, who costars as forensic genius Gil Grissom: "The police chase the lie, the crime-scene analysts chase the truth. Ultimately, these are the guys who are going to give closure to the world. It's not going to be the homicide guys; they're going to be dinosaurs."

In fact, Petersen's Grissom, the leader of the show's rubber-gloved squad, is modelled after a real-life Vegas counterpart, one Daniel Holstein. "He keeps ant farms in his office, he has pig's blood in Chinese takeaway containers in his refrigerator, he goes home and practises blood-spatter analysis," says Zuiker. "I was, like, who is this fascinating, crazy guy?"

Helgenberger thinks they cunningly get away with all the blood and guts because of the flashbacks. Whenever the CSI unit has a theory about how the crime was committed there's a re-enactment; the crime is committed several different times during one programme. "So it's all about assumptions," she says. "It's how we think it happened, not how it really happened."

So would she let Huey, her 10-year-old son, watch the show? "Well, some shows are more intense than others so I'd steer him away from those," she says. "But basically it's a mystery show, it's all about solving crime and he knows it's not real.

"Actually," she continues, "we've been watching another show on the Discovery Channel called The New Detectives and that scares him a lot more. It's about a similar subject but it's more frightening because those are real stories."

Frightening but also kind of fascinating. Since she started working on CSI Helgenberger has found herself much more interested in the field of forensic science.

And to prepare for the role she had to ride with the real Crime Scene Investigations team in Las Vegas for a night. "I just tried to ask as many questions as possible," she explains. "And it was exciting because you're potentially going to get involved in solving a crime that's just been committed. But," she says with a laugh, "it was a pretty slow night in Las Vegas — which in some ways I have to admit I'm glad about."

She now also finds herself scanning the pages of the LA Times for cases involving forensic science. These she clips and gives to the show's producers — they could potentially make the basis of a good plot line.

But it wasn't just the intriguing corpses and sensational plot lines that drew Helgenberger to the part.

The Nebraska native has been an actress since, straight after leaving university, she was lured to New York by a talent agent who landed her a job on a daytime soap called Ryan's Hope. Since then she's won an Emmy Award for her role as KC, the hooker with the heart of gold on the Vietnam memoir, China Beach, and more praise for parts such as the dying cancer patient she played in the film Erin Brockovich. Sci-fi fans will recall her roles in another physiologically challenged franchise, Species I and II.

"But before this came up I'd been feeling like I've been on location for the last 10 years. I really grew to loathe it," Helgenberger explains. "I was spending more time with my make-believe family than my real one and living in a hotel room."

CSI appealed because it's shot mainly in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband, actor Alan Rosenberg and Huey, with only occasional trips to Las Vegas.

And Helgenberger also felt she could relate well to the part of Willows, who often has to juggle her family commitments and her job.

For this reason her favourite CSI plotline to date has been about a missing child. "She becomes obsessed with trying to find out what happened to this little girl and there's an interesting twist at the end. I liked it a lot because I thought we really got to see her passion," she explains.

"Willows is spirited and sassy," Helgenberger says. "I'd like to think she's a good, tough cop without being too mean."

And Willows is also, according to a survey of male viewers in the US, a bit of a babe. At the other end of the phone Helgenberger, who is 42, is cracking up with laughter.

"That's great," she says, finally catching her breath. "It really boosts my ego to have younger men find me sexy. I feel like I'm in really good company — look at Madonna. And Sharon Stone. I think women in their 40s are coming on strong in Hollywood."

So what do the real forensic scientists think?

Bad news for anyone who thought they'd like to become a crime scene investigator after watching CSI. It's not exactly realistic, say the real-life crime scene investigators and forensic scientists at ESR (Environmental and Science Research), where most of this country's scientific police work is done.

"I think most of the forensic scientists I know watch it once just to see what the fuss is all about and then, having had a good laugh, they never watch it again," says Peter Wilson, client manager at ESR, Wellington.

Many of the techniques and methods the CSI team use appear to be realistic and Wilson speculates that many of the plot lines would be based on actual cases.

"They probably start with a real-life scenario and then work backwards," he says. "But it's the timing that's all wrong. For instance, they seem to get DNA tests done overnight when in fact they take anything between three days and a week or more. They turn a six-month investigation into one hour."

Nor, he says, do the guys at the ESR go out and arrest anyone. They're mostly hard at work behind desks and test-tubes and wouldn't normally come face to face with a criminal mastermind unless they were being mugged.

One of the most annoying things about CSI for Wilson and his colleagues is the possibility that the programme could be educating would-be criminals about how not to get caught out by forensic science.

So is there anything CSI is good for?

"A laugh," Wilson suggests. Apparently it's already the subject of much hilarity in the offices of the ESR.