The folks who put the 'reality' in TV

In many cases, Baz says, audience tolerance is more of a challenge than revealing secrets. "The most difficult thing on our show is: How far can we go with what's getting ready to happen out in the real world and how far do we push it before the audience gets a little too scared?"

This is equally true for the grisly crime shows. The CSI shows have been noted for their graphic gore, but Devine says audiences respond as long as the detail is helping them understand how to solve the crime.

"We bring you into the body," she says, "and show you what we're talking about."

This approach has the added benefit of getting viewers past technical jargon. "That's one of the reasons people watch our show, because it's cool," says Devine. "When we say, 'the stab wound pierced the aorta,' we're going to take you in and show you where that is and why that wasn't necessarily good for the victim."

However, consultants can do only so much to make the show realistic. It takes actors who really understand to communicate the humanity behind the procedures. "I actually had to take them through a training program," says Baz, about the cast of his show, with additional intervention for some individuals.

In the Thanksgiving episode, he says, the actor Jason O'Mara was locked up. As Baz watched, he says "there was something missing." The actor agreed.

"So, I took him into another part of the set and actually put him inside a small box for 30 minutes and didn't let him out." The actor got it, says Baz. You can try this at home, he adds. "If you want to know what it's like to be incarcerated, climb underneath your sink for 30 minutes," he says with a laugh.

Despite the success of the procedural these days, not every crime show feels the need for technical advisers. "There's something about Columbo that's bigger than life," says actor/producer Peter Falk, who brings his familiar alter ego back in another TV movie Jan. 30 on ABC.

Columbo doesn't use technical advisers. "He's not any more real than Sherlock Holmes is real," he says. What he looks for in his scripts are great scenes. "A good clue provides a scene," he says. "Something can be technically accurate, but if it doesn't provide a scene," he says with a shrug, "who cares?"

Every crime-show consultant has his or her pet peeves. Forensics expert Elizabeth Devine, producer of CBS's "CSI" and "CSI: Miami," runs a clean shop, and insists the "CSI" shows depict that reality.

"My biggest thing is eating in the lab. That's what offices are for," she says. "I lost a lot of battles, particularly [show lead] Dr. Robinson eating in autopsy. There's just absolutely no way anyone would do that, because it's so disgustingly gross in there and it smells terrible."

Then there's the issue of identity for undercover agents. "I'd like to see people live their cover a little more," says Bazzel Baz, a former CIA operative who advises on "The Agency." "I'm always amazed at how we're able to float in and out of every country in the world in the same face with no disguise and the same name. You know, you'd think they would stop you at the border and say, 'Mr. Stiles, weren't you here last month spying on our country?' "

Medical TV dramas frequently take license, particularly when it comes to being clean, says Lisa Zwerling, adviser to "Presidio Med." Flipping through the channels, she said she saw surgery being performed. "It ... looked like someone's office with a desk that they had just put a sheet over and put a patient on," she says, shaking her head. "No one in the room was wearing a mask, which is one of my personal battles. I know you hate putting masks on people, but it just screams wrong to have people in a sterile field operating on a patient without masks on."

Despite decades of cop shows, law-enforcement details still aren't always correct. "The ones that probably bother me the most are when I see somebody's civil rights being violated just blatantly," says Mark Llewellyn, FBI consultant for "Without a Trace." "It's just little things, like going into somebody's room when they don't have permission, they don't have a warrant, it's not an incident to arrest. Those types of things bother me more than anything."

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