"CSI" is a straightforward howdunit with some addictive gimmicks. There are long wordless stretches where we peer over the shoulders of Grissom and his boys and girls as they use all kinds of cool methods and machinery, some gleamingly high-tech, some funky and homegrown, to bring old bloodstains out into the light, dust for prints, determine time of death, reconstruct a face from a skeleton or figure out the trajectory of a bullet. Then there are the surreal, saturated-color sequences where we see the criminalists' theories enacted from the point of view of a bullet or a burning bomb fuse. For puzzle people, mystery fans and those who have a taste for gadgets and whiz-bang, "CSI" was getting to be a nice little Friday night time-passer -- the Sharper Image catalogue of crime shows.

On Feb. 1 though, CBS attached "CSI" to the coattails of "Survivor" and moved it from Fridays to Thursdays at 9 p.m. And while "CSI" has benefited handsomely from the move (the Feb. 1 episode was the fourth most-watched program of the week, according to the Nielsen ratings), the show's modest pleasures are suddenly looking a little too modest in the harsh light of Thursday, the big leagues of network programming.

"CSI" is one of those CBS dramas, like "The Fugitive" or last summer's mob drama "Falcone," that means to be hip and edgy, but doesn't quite have the moves to pull it off. (Still, compared to most of what passes for drama on CBS, "CSI" looks like "The Sopranos.") Since Grissom's squad works the night shift, the writers lay on the seamy atmosphere (gamblers, hookers) with a trowel. But everything feels weirdly generic and sanitized. The hookers are always sweet apple-pie kids with hard luck stories, the hard-core gamblers are central-casting-pathetic, which means they need shaves. "CSI" doesn't have the bite or the wit to do justice to the ripe, weird wonders of Vegas. And the dialogue is so faux hard-boiled it verges on goofiness. "She's stiff like a 2-minute burrito that's only been nuked for 1 minute," Grissom noted in one episode as he inspected a corpse. Or maybe he was just auditioning for "Naked Gun 4."

"CSI" also has a bad case of hokey plotline fever, otherwise known as "Nash Bridges" disease. This is a tragic malady that affects cop shows when the writers can't think of a clever way to help us get to know the characters. Instead, they make every other case personal. In "CSI," we've already had a rookie criminalist murdered in the line of duty, a squad member's ex-husband accused of rape and another squad member suspected of murdering a hooker he'd spent the night with -- and it's only halfway through the first season.

But what really puts "CSI" in danger of becoming a guilty pleasure for all the wrong reasons is that it seems so unaware of how hokey and thin it is. I mean, the characters' names say it all. Grissom (read: "gruesome") is obsessed with cadavers and insects. Grissom's on-the-job rival is the sneering Ecklie, who is both icky and ugly. His boss is named Capt. Brass, which is like naming a priest Father Clergy. Criminalist Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) is a willowy former exotic dancer. Criminalist Sara Sidel (Jorja Fox) is a young protégé Grissom brought in from San Francisco, and she sidles up to Daddy at every opportunity. Then we have the squabbling dudes Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan) who is, well, brown, and Nick Stokes (George Eads) who is, like, stoked.

Best of all -- or worst, depending on how you feel about shows that are so bad they're good -- is Petersen's full-speed-ahead performance as Grissom. You can see what attracted Petersen to the part; Grissom is larger-than-life, eccentric and always right, even when he's wrong. It's a succulent star turn, and Petersen relishes every morsel.

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