There's hay on the floor and mud on the streets. Light comes from candles, and transportation is by horseback. A sassy young woman pours shots by the glass in the saloon, which is populated by dirty-faced cowboys. The local lawman sports a steely gaze and cowboy hat.
The scene is unmistakably Old West.
Yet look at this setting another way and it could be CBS' quite-up-to-date hit drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."
There's a detective, bent over the freshly dug-up corpse lying on a table in a dingy ice house, the investigator's face alive with anticipation as he positions a magnifying glass over the slain man's open eyes.
"This is where the real detective work begins -- forensic medicine," the detective proclaims. Leaning closer, he speculates that the victim probably was drugged, "perfectly relaxed, possibly conscious as the killer tightened the garrote around his throat." Moments later, he starts to slice up the corpse to gather evidence. Indeed, throughout his investigation, the emphasis is on using the latest scientific methods to determine the cause of death and the perpetrator.
The moment comes in USA Network's new drama, "Peacemakers": Call it "CSI on a Saddle." The series, which premieres tonight, is set in the late 1880s during the last days of the Western frontier. Tom Berenger stars as a grizzled federal marshal who hooks up with a British-born, Chinese-speaking Pinkerton detective (Peter O'Meara) and a mortician and one-time medical student (Amy Carlson). The team solves crimes in an era when forensic science is so new that fingerprinting is the latest technological breakthrough.
"Peacemakers" is the latest symptom of two overlapping medical conditions: TV's ever-present cloning syndrome, in which a hit nearly always spawns more shows in a similar vein, as well as a specific case of forensic fever.
The latter has been spreading lately all over cable and broadcast networks, largely sparked by the success of "CSI" and using much of the stylish camera work and effects that made the CBS drama about forensic investigators into TV's most popular show. From Court TV's "Forensic Files" to the History Channel's "Dead Reckoning," the outbreak has given new life to shows about death.
