Created by Anthony Zuiker, the CBS cop series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which first aired on October 6, 2000, could be described as "Quincy for the 21st century." Set in Las Vegas, the weekly, 60-minute series focused on the activities of that city's Crime Scene Investigations Bureau. Working the overnight shift, the principal characters deployed state-of-the-art forensic technology to solve unsolvable crimes. Whenever scientific analysis failed, however, the lab's "criminalists" relied upon good, old-fashioned logic -- logical to them, if not to their superiors. So efficient was the CSI team that it was rated the number two such crime lab in America. The series' main protagonist was Gil Grissom (William L. Petersen), once the youngest coroner in the history of the L.A. police department, who after 15 years with the Vegas PD, was put in charge of the crime lab when its former skipper, the mercurial Captain Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle), was transferred back to the homicide division. Grissom's elite ensemble included his second-in-command, onetime exotic dancer Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger), who juggled her professional responsibilities with her home duties as a single mother; ex-grave digger Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan), the only member of the team who was born in Vegas and, as such, the most savvy member when it came to the ins and outs of the casino industry that figured so largely in the proceedings; Warrick's friendly rival, the warm and outgoing Nick Stokes ...
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