OPPURTUNITY,RELEASE YOUR TIES TO THE PAST, WHEN YOU LET GO OF THE OLD, YOU MAKE ROOM FOR THE NEW.


IT'S Thursday and the body count is rising. On Monday the corpse of a prominent politician's daughter, missing for seven years, was washed ashore after a storm; on Tuesday an HIV-positive porn star had her throat cut while making a snuff film and a Down syndrome stable-boy was gored to death, then eaten to the bone by red ants; and last night was a nasty blur of voyeurism, pedophilia, rape and dismemberment.Frankly, with the number of assaults, violations and slayings that have been occurring recently, it almost makes a person afraid to go home and turn on the television of an evening.
It doesn't take the stiletto-sharp instincts of a Lieutenant Horatio Crane combined with the obsessive-compulsive attention to detail of a senior forensics officer Gil Grissom to figure out that the TV networks are in the grip of a prime-time crime wave. Just glance at the blood-spattered program guide.
This week there are more than 20 programs featuring some form of often fatal malfeasance, including Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Monk, The Handler, Hack, The Shield and NYPD Blue on Ten; CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, Cold Case and Without a Trace on Nine; Crossing Jordan, Sensing Murder and home-grown police drama Blue Heelers on Seven; Dalziel and Pascoe and The Bill on the ABC; and cult Austrian drama Inspector Rex (the one with crime-solving german shepherd) on SBS.
Add to that list one-offs such as DNA, Seven's Sunday night psychological thriller starring Tom Conti as a former police forensic scientist, and you're talking about a sizeable weekly death toll.

Sizeable audiences, too. Last week the 10 top-rated crime shows were watched by a combined audience of almost 15 million people. Heading the rankings, with 1.8million viewers, was a CSI repeat. The forensic-mystery series, which started in Australia in April 2001 and slowly built up a following during the next two years, has exploded in popularity this year and not just in Australia. Entertainment Weekly reports that it is one of the most-watched dramas in the world, screening in 177 countries. (To put that in perspective, at its peak Baywatch aired in about 140 countries – and, yes, there probably is some neat metaphor about sex and death to be extrapolated from that, but let's not go there.)
"Viewers have really embraced these shows. There has definitely been a resurgence over the past couple of years," says Peter Andrews, Ten's network program manager. He believes they appeal for several reasons, including their cinema-quality production values and self-contained storylines, which mean no history is required to understand what's going on. "It's very escapist TV," he says. "Viewers can sit down for an hour and really get involved in this world."
Seven network programming director Tim Worner credits the series' popularity in part to their predictability. "There will be a murder or a crime, there will be a body or an intriguing collection of evidence, there will be a bunch of suspects and an investigation, usually a twist, and then just before or after the last commercial break justice will be served," he says. "Viewers know going in that they will [be] spat out the other side of the hour with all the boxes ticked, crime solved, on we go with the next one – usually a repeat."
Ten is home to two of the grandaddys of the genre, Law & Order, which started showing in Australia in 1993, three years after the US, and NYPD Blue, which first aired here in 1994. After a hiatus, NYPD Blue recently made a comeback, albeit in the graveyard slot of 11.30pm on Saturday. Despite its age, Law & Order has never looked better, with even a repeat episode pulling almost 1million viewers on Monday night.
And the audiences are growing. Andrea Keir, Nine's Los Angeles-based president of programming and acquisitions in North America, reports that crime is the hit of the US autumn ratings season. Of the five most watched programs last week, four were crime shows. CSI was No.1 with 30.5 million viewers, followed by CSI: Miami at No.2 with 22.4 million viewers, Without a Trace at No.3 with 21.5 million viewers and CSI: New York at No.5 with 19.2 million viewers.
Without a Trace even beat a first-run episode of ER (No.4 with 19.6 million viewers), the first time another drama has been able to knock off the popular medical series. Also making the top 20 were two episodes of Law & Order and one of Law & Order: SVU.
"People clearly can't get enough of this product," Keir says. "These programs are well produced and people have an appetite."
Attending parent-teacher night at her child's school last week, Keir was amused to discover that the grade seven science curriculum includes a component called CSI. "Wouldn't the producers love that? What great branding," she says. "Only in LA."
She predicts we will see a lot of crime on our television screens throughout 2005 and 2006. "Obviously the producers and the networks believe there's an appetite for this type of programming that's not going to wane any time soon."
Judging by its enthusiastic reception in the US, Nine expects CSI: New York, the latest spawn of the CSI franchise, to be a big hit with local crime fans when it starts here next year. The series stars Gary Sinise and Keir describes it as "very dark", both in plots and setting.
Ten's top drawcard will be the fourth Law & Order incarnation, Law & Order: Trial By Jury, which takes the point of view of judges, prosecutors, defenders and jurors as it follows criminal cases from arraignment through trial. It will arrive here in the first half of 2005. And while next year will be the last for NYPD Blue, which is being retired, executive producer Steve Bochco already has a new crime drama, Blind Justice, starring Ron Eldard as a vision-impaired detective, which will also be on Ten.
Coming on Seven is The First 48, a new real-life series by A&E Television Networks that focuses on the critical first 48 hours of homicide investigations.
In January, Australia will also be the first country to get A&E's new pay-TV Crime & Investigation Channel, on Foxtel. The launch of the channel has yet to be officially announced but its line-up of 24-hour blood-letting is expected to include true-crime series City Confidential and Cold Case Files, crime drama Dead Reckoning and biographies of well-known murderers, serial killers and other criminals.
Other crime shows in development and likely to turn up here sooner or later include The Evidence, a new production from John Wells (executive producer of ER and The West Wing); and Murder Book, a police-procedural drama from Fox.
But with all this death on screen, could viewers be at risk of (and I apologise in advance here) overkill?
Seven's Worner believes the "comfort food" predictability of the crime shows will eventually jade viewers' palates. "You soon get a bit tired of eating the same tucker all the time, especially if it all starts to taste a bit the same and some of it's simply reheated," he says. "[But] I personally am not worried because I strongly suspect our shows are and will be different enough to survive any downturn due to 'over-murder'."
However, Ten's Andrews believes that while second-rate copycat shows may eventually dilute the genre's popularity, established franchises such as Law & Order and CSI have a loyal following and will always do well.
"As long as the established formats maintain their quality, I don't think they will suffer," he says. "People are always in for good storytelling . . . Also, with most of these shows, you do get a resolution and that is very satisfying for viewers."