CSI: 6.2

CSI is blessed with a very cinematic quality, thanks to slick direction, and both the picture and sound do it justice on this release. When it comes to extras, though, it’s a mixed bag.

Firstly, the commentary tracks aren’t immediately obvious from the menu screen, which is somewhat annoying. It’s only after you choose to play an episode that you are given the choice of a commentary – if one exists - meaning that unless you have the box to hand, you’ll be stopping and starting episodes a lot to find them.

Unfortunately, even when you do locate them, they are far from buried treasure. There are two on these discs. One with executive producer/writer Naren Shankar, director/producer Kenneth Fink and writer Dustin Lee Abrahan, talking about Killer and a second on Poppin’ Tags, which features Abraham again and George Eads (who plays Nick Stokes).

There isn’t a lot to choose between them, but the second with Eads is marginally more entertaining – mainly due to his self-deprecatory comments about his hair cut. Having said that, the Killer commentary is so deathly dull, that doesn’t say much. Fink, Shankar and Abraham slip into back-slapping mode and, irritatingly, keep telling us how we are reacting to the episode, rather than just suggesting what they hoped to achieve.

The Season Six Trajectory (20 minutes), is also a disappointment, although it just about makes the case that there is some character development and plot arc involved. However, there is far too much concentration on the episodes A Bullet Runs Through It Part One and Two, which aren’t even featured on this set.

William Peterson says at one point: “If we revealed too much in episode 50, what would we do in episode 130?” Be creative, maybe? It’s a pretty lame excuse.

Much better – although very brief - are the featurette extras. Apparent Cause Of Death (six minutes), sees stars Robert David Hall (who plays Dr Robbins) and David Berman (coroner David Phillips, in the show) introduce us to ‘a corpse’. Make-up guru Matthew W Mungle, then goes on to explain how he achieves the look of death. Hall and Berman are back in Coroner Reports, chatting about their role in the show and the difficulties of actors playing corpses. This is, oddly, carved up into four sub-categories: Respecting The Dead, Stomach Contents, Special Handling and Surprise Findings, which seems rather unnecessary as the whole lot only has a runtime of around five minutes.

Also carved up, is Gadgets And Gizmos, in which technical consultant and writer Richard Catalani takes us through some of the devices used. The descriptions of a borescope with fibreoptic camera, forensic buddy, scanning electron microscope, Nicolet Almega (laser ablation), camlite, micro FTIR are accompanied by footage from the show. This is informative but Catalani lacks sparkle.

Ultimately, the best extra associated with Season 6, is the one concerning the use of sound, which featured on the 6.1 box set.