Zuiker 'Not Over The Moon' With Early 'New York'

CSI creator Anthony Zuiker recently confessed that the first season of CSI: New York taught him an important lesson on how to best develop a new television show: don't try too many things at once.

"I'm not necessarily over the moon about how the first half of the season's gone," he told Rich Kussman at the Sacramento Bee, for an article which appeared on the day CBS aired "The Fall," but which we didn't discover until today. "Never being a showrunner, I had in my head what I felt the series would be. [...] I wanted a darker, more aggressive, grittier show. A lot of crushed blues and crushed blacks. Tell a lot of underground stories about New York. We put the labs and the interrogation room in a dungeon. Everything was underground. Everything was dark."

The gloom extended beyond the show's visual style to the other linchpin of Zuiker's creative vision: New York's stronger focus on the characters' personal lives. Here, too, Zuiker said he was trying to do too much too fast. "It's like when you go on a first date and start talking about all your bad relationships and all your habits. ... Perhaps we gave up too much information in the beginning. Mac had a wife, he lost her in 9/11, he's in church, can't find solace. People are going, 'My life's already messed up, I don't want to hang out with this guy.'"

In retrospect, Zuiker said he would have presented his character's background details more slowly, and certainly would have brightened the look of the show. But he thought he and the other producers had now finally found the right creative voice for New York. "The show is now a mystery side by side with character, which was sort of what I wanted to do in the beginning. I just took it too far," he said. "We think we found the best way to use [Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor)] and [Melina Kanakeredes (Stella Bonasera)] and we think we've found a voice of New York. ... And that's my maturity, to learn to convey that."

So is Zuiker happy now, with the new direction of the show? In the Sacramento Bee, he agreed it was best for the show's success - but still seemed wistful for the tone he originally envisioned for New York. "I can't always just write what I want to write. [...] I tend to have a darker vision of things. I tend to get into the minutiae of the world's darker elements. That really can't be the staple of a show over 23 episodes."

The full article features a look back at how Zuiker originally managed to get the CSI franchise on the air, and also includes comments by CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler. You can find it by heading over to the Sacramento Bee.

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