But before I kill you, Mr. Bond, let me show you this comprehensive Powerpoint presentation on my complete evil plan

SPOILER WARNING: There will be fairly shameless spoilers throughout this post - specifically, for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (hereafter referred to as "CSI Vegas", or possibly "CSI - you know, the good one"), CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, Alias and The Bourne Ultimatum. If this is a problem...well, sorry!

It's not like I really need an excuse to be rude about CSI: Miami, but I'm afraid that sometimes you see something that makes it imperative to do so. The episode last night was just atrocious - so bad, in fact, that it made me take a mental step backwards just so that I could try to work out exactly why it's so bad.

For a start, there's the plot points. The episode started with a Cuban immigrant running up a beach, in a sequence that seemed to take at least three weeks, before accidentally stepping on a landmine and dying horribly. It turned out at the end of the episode that said landmine had been planted by a baseball pitcher, who knew that the immigrant was a very good pitcher and who might have replaced him on his team.

Now, even putting aside the fact that killing someone who might take your job is something of an overreaction (why not just give them food poisoning or something?), planting a landmine is an appalling way to kill someone, not only from the point of view of humanity but also in a practical sense. The murderer's train of thought must have gone something like this.

"Right...this guy is going to be competing for my job. So I'm likely to be in close contact with him over the next few weeks...I can find out where he lives...I can find out his personal habits...I can work out when he's most vulnerable and commit the perfect crime.

Ahh, screw it, I'll plant a bunch of mines somewhere on the beach he'll probably have to run along at some indeterminate point."

Added to the wooden acting, the attempts to do special effects way beyond the show's budget (one episode involved a tsunami hitting Miami. They filmed it with about two seconds of bargain basement CGI and a bunch of people who were conveniently locked in a bank vault going "ooh, look at the tsunami") and the cast of characters who clearly loathe each other, and you have a recipe for a fairly poor piece of light entertainment. But then you add Horatio to the mix.

Oh dear, Horatio.

David Caruso's portrayal of Lt. Horatio Caine is, very possibly, the most irritating performance in the history of TV acting. Caine overreacts to suspects, often practically threatening them with death, talks to kids in a manner that goes right through "creepy" and borders on "my eyes my eyes I need to scrub out my eyes", repeats the name of the person he's talking to at least three times in every conversation, comes up with "affectionate" (read: also annoying) names for his team members, and is apparently biologically incapable of looking straight at anyone. Seriously, if he bends his head any further over to the right, or twists it to look out into the middle distance any further to his left, he's going to do some serious damage.

Oh, and make up your mind - sunglasses on or sunglasses off? Not a difficult choice!

The funny thing is that several of these problems are present, to some extent at least, in the other CSI shows. In one of the earlier seasons of CSI Vegas, there was an absolute peach of a ridiculous plot; a girl was killed entirely accidentally when she dropped a rubbish bin down a chute, went outside to fetch it, and was leaning into the skip under the chute's outlet when a car hit the skip and crushed her to death - this plot, already stupid enough, was surrounded with thefts, security camera sabotage, mercy dashes to the hospital and all manner of pointless details.

Or there's the intensely annoying British pathologist in CSI: NY, whose sole function is apparently to look pretty but cold and speak in clipped tones about her relationship angst. Stupid plots aren't any stranger to CSI: NY either, with one recent episode involving Mac and Stella having to fight their way through a bunch of IRA terrorists in a blatant ripoff clever homage to Die Hard.

So why are these other shows entertaining, when Miami is capable of producing violent reactions like...well, this one? I think it's probably because, even though they do use lazy plotting and annoying characterisation, a certain amount can be forgiven because of several other factors. CSI Vegas possesses characters who, despite some conflict, clearly love their jobs and are good at them. Add interesting quirks, such as Gil's surprising interest in the most outlandish topics (whether it's related to male Victorian corsets or bondage - no, really), and Sara's latent major problems, and you get a bunch of people who you actually want to find out more about, even if there's some daft aspects to the show.

CSI: NY has similar saving graces, in the shape of an unreasonably beautiful cast and some hilariously weird lines. Any show that includes lines like "so, we're looking for a one-legged woman wearing high heels who possesses sweet kung-fu skills" definitely gets to invoke the Rule of Funny. Let's also not forget that this is the show that actually does good pre-credits lines. Mac's priceless "Anybody got a spatula?" (on visiting a crime scene where the victim was crushed to death) can cover over a multitude of sins.

So is it possible to have TV programmes or movies that don't have to drag themselves back up out of irritation, because they're already superb? Well, there are already some that manage not to fall into the most egregious problems. I was pleasantly surprised, for example, to see an episode of Alias where the writers had clearly been reading the Evil Overlord List. Sydney, in this episode, has been trapped in a small room by two gun-wielding police officers. In a startling break from usual Hollywood-style police conduct, one immediately radios in and tells his superiors what he's about to do; he and his colleague then take up positions such that even if one of them gets knocked down, the other will have a clear shot.

Needless to say, given that she's the main character, Sydney does manage to defeat the police officers, leaving the viewers with the feeling that she managed this because she was better than they were, not because they were unaccountably stupid. A very similar thing happens in The Bourne Ultimatum - throughout the film, the CIA bring the best technology and agents to bear on Jason Bourne. The only reason they don't defeat him is that, once again, he's just better than them. In fact, this could well be why the entire film is so good. Because there's no reliance on overdone tropes, like the villain conveniently running out of ammunition at just the right moment (see pretty much every action movie ever made), the audience gets an impression of consistency with reality.

Of course, what they've actually got is consistency with Hollywood reality, as Bourne is still superhumanly good at what he does. The fact that the audience doesn't feel cheated, though, must produce a very good impression. Now, if only more writers would actually try to carry this off, we'd have a lot more decent TV and films.

Of course, if we did have decent entertainment we'd never get anything done.