Law & Order: Criminal Intent & NCIS

This article first appeared in The Age on May 15, 2004

It use to be that you had to side with The Beatles or the Rolling Stones, Skyhooks or Sherbet. These days it's Jerry Bruckheimer or Dick Wolf. If pressed I have to say that I prefer Bruckheimer's Without a Trace and CSIs Wednesday and over Wolf's Law & Orders. My complaint with both producers is that they are driven by plot, not character, though Bruckheimer has amended that in Without a Trace (Wednesday, 9.30pm, Channel 9), as Wolf has done in Law and Order: Criminal Intent (Sunday, Channel 10, 8.30pm).

Vincent D'Onofrio plays Criminal Intent's Detective Goran, who acts dumb but is really smart. But where Goran's forebear, Colombo, was dishevelled, Goran is creepy. He is always touching people, speaking softly and seducing them into spilling their guts (no pun intended). The unconvincing, but reassuringly formulaic, thing about Criminal Intent is that his methods work. As the hour draws nigh, there Goran will be, sitting in a small room with a criminal and his family members or lovers, turning one against the other by saying something along the lines of: 'He/she never loved you. He/she first betrayed you when he was only 17. He/she set you up for murder . . . How does that make you feel?' At which point the other party will give him the evidence Goran needs to make an arrest. So, this season we've had the architect who is married to three women at once and whose third wife went psycho, the man who sets up his mentally ill brother, and tonight, a missing woman whose disappearance triggers investigation into a family's dealings.

The plots are more middle class than the other Law & Orders. Don't look here for the brothers in the hood, look here for the Jackyll & Hyde businessmen. Look here too for relentlessly complex plots that I personally never can keep track off, though this does have the advantage of meaning I am always surprised at the end.

While Criminal Intent is not for me, I applaud Channel 10's leap away from the Sunday night movie. Almost inevitably these day, given theatrical release, DVDs and pay TV, almost everyone else has seen any film that any free-to-air channel cares to screen - without the ads. Ten continues their movie free Sunday night with a new series, NCIS (Naval Criminal Intelligence Service) at 9.30p.m. NCIS follows a team of special agents whose job is investigating any crime that is connected to Navy and Marine Corps. No, it's not produced by Bruckheimer, but to underline his ubiquity there is, in the very first ten minutes of NCIS, banter about acronyms and CSI. Certainly both shows shares an interest in forensics, though NCIS is less hardcore than CSI. The first episode of NCIS was notable for having a convincing George Bush boarding Airforce One (though personally I prefer it when Jed Bartlett is on that plane). The plot which follows is light, but fun. Our main man is Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), and his partner in sexual tension is Agent Caitlin Todd (Sasha Alexander), the Secret Service agent we meet in the first episode. Neither NCIS or Criminal Intent is going to set the world on fire - but both may well shake up the ratings.

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