MUMBAI: Come September and there will be more action on AXN. The channel has lined up the third season of CSI Miami, which will go on air from Thursday, 1 September at 11 pm.
The channel will also kick off a new reality show The World’s Wildest Commercials every Wednesday from 7 September at 10 pm. Over 5000 commercial spots will be showcased - from a male stripper selling snack food to a talking chimp selling a cable television service. The thread that binds the content is the commonality of the storytelling style.
AXN will also air another new show Las Vegas every Wednesday at 11 pm from 14 September. The drama follows a surveillance team as it maintains security of Las Vegas casino and resort.
They have to deal with card counting cheats, streaks of random luck on the part of casino visitors, which prove costly. Then there is the threat of rival casinos trying to woo their high rollers. It stars James Caan of The Godfather, Misery.
Apart from that, the finale of the fifth season of CSI on AXN has a terrific scene, which will be aired on 8 September at 11 pm Trapped in a coffin six feet under a crime scene investigator imagines that his body is being dissected on the autopsy slab by a doctor while his father looks on. While the doctor pulls out body parts including intestines from the body the father asks him if the death was painful. The two of them even find time to crack jokes.
Mixing macabre with humour can be tricky but Quentin Tarantino pulls the feat off with considerable aplomb. The director of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill directed the two part final episode called Grave Danger.
The coffin scenes reminded this writer of Tarantino’s film Kill Bill where Uma Thurman, in her quest to seek revenge, is also put in one. The crucial difference is that while Thurman is able to literally punch herself out of danger the unfortunate CSI investigator has to wait for help and try to avoid shooting himself in the meantime.
This special is a race against time as the CSI team led by William Peterson and Marg Helgenberger try to save one of their own before it is too late. Basically the investigator was kidnapped by someone baring a grudge. The dialogue is fast and witty and while Tarantino manages not to intrude on the show’s format he is able to bring his own unique touch to it. The deal came about as he is a big fan of the show. He is even said to be perhaps looking at creating a television series of his own.
In the US, the final episode managed to get over 30 million viewers making it the tenth time that CSI managed to achieve that. In Canada on CTV, Grave Danger managed a peak audience of 5.4 million viewers and an average of nearly five million. As far as specials go, only the Oscar Awards managed to get in more viewers. In the UK on Five (earlier Channel 5) the fifth season managed a weekly average of 3.3 million viewers.
