CSI Gets a Vegas Reboot on Global

Familiar favourites join new faces as a popular procedural returns

Familiar favourites join new faces as a popular procedural returns

If a new series has you thinking it’s 2000 again instead of 2021, you can be forgiven.

When creator and executive producer Anthony E. Zuiker’s Las Vegas-set CSI: Crime Scene Investigation launched 21 years ago, it quickly became a much bigger hit than many anticipated… establishing a long-running franchise that also came to encompass spinoffs CSI: Miami, CSI: NY and, alas, CSI: Cyber. Like all empires, it crumbled, with the one-and-done series finale of Cyber in March 2016 marking the end of CSI as a whole.

But now, what’s old truly is new again as CBS revisit s the original Vegas Crime Lab and welcomes back some of its iconic founding members.

A direct sequel to the first show, the latest iteration reunites William Petersen and Jorja Fox as romantically linked—in fact, formerly married—forensic experts Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle. Other returnees who’ll be familiar to the CSI faithful include Wallace Langham as David Hodges and (guest-starring in a few episodes) Paul Guilfoyle as their former police liaison Jim Brass. Paula Newsome also stars as the lab’s current leader, and Matt Lauria (Friday Night Lights), Mel Rodriguez (The Last Man on Earth) and Mandeep Dhillon (Bulletproof) round out the new roster of crime-scene techs. Grissom and Sidle reenter the mix at a time when the Crime Lab is weathering a scandalous misstep that could result in scores of convictions being overturned; it’s up to the seasoned vets and the newbies to work together to serve justice and ensure the lab itself isn’t shuttered.

“I think that between Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Cyber, we did hit a sort of audience exhaustion,” Zuiker allows. “It was always in the back of our minds that this would probably come back, because CSI was such an iconic show and it was mystery-based—it would make perfect sense at some point. I believe we made the crime genre white-hot, and it’s still pretty hot to this day, and I think the timing is interesting, because the world has changed.”

Indeed, then-cutting-edge forensic techniques were a big part of CSI‘s appeal… and they still appeal to Petersen, who’s an executive producer as well as a star of the new show, as he was the first time. “I sort of jumped at it,” he says, “because of the idea of revisiting Grissom and Sara, to see who we are now. Plus, it’s a different world than it was 20 years ago. The idea of being able to come back into the land of science, I thought, was really a great opportunity.”

While allowing that “we had to diversify the cast, based on the times,” Zuiker feels CSI: Vegas has a strong suit in presenting principal actors from the original run again.

“It wasn’t that difficult” to get them back, he maintains. “It was really just sitting down with Billy [Petersen] first at a diner in downtown Los Angeles, much like when we sat down
at a café in 1999. I expected much more of a struggle, but I think he saw enough familiar faces who had been around from day one to say yes.”

CSI: Vegas airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Global & CBS