“CSI: Cyber” began its second season on Sunday, but those working on the show aren’t feeling any added pressure now that its parent program, “CSI,” is off the air.
“There’s always a pressure on a show all the time,” executive producer Pam Veasey told TheWrap. “We’re well aware that we’re the only one left, but in television there’s pressure regardless, particularly when you’re the last — like the little stepchild of the franchise.”
The show stars Oscar winner Patricia Arquette as Avery Ryan, an FBI agent with the newly established cyber forensics division. Veasey, who previously worked on “CSI: New York,” said working with cyber crimes is very different than working with more traditional crimes.
“We don’t have a lot of dead bodies on the ground,” she told TheWrap. “We can think on ‘CSI: New York’ of the most gruesome visual of a body and launch an entire episode from it. Here I start with something that is not very tangible, which is hacking in cyber space.”
But while the show may not feature as many dead bodies, this season will feature something just as creepy.
“We launch our season talking about cockroaches, live cockroaches, that can be controlled via a little component on their back by a telephone, via WiFi,” Veasey said. “We are the only show to make the creepy image of a cockroach look adorable within the first five minutes.”
Veasey also said that working on the show has impacted her view on technology. “I’m not getting a smart phone ever,” she said with a laugh. “There’s so many ways that people can be outside your home and enter it because you have signals that are connected to your coffee maker or you printer or your computer… The minute a ‘CSI: Cyber’ writer gets attacked we’re all going to laugh and say, ‘We knew better.’”
She also promised that this season would continue to explore new and interesting ways that technology impacts our daily lives.
“We’ve learned there are a lot of children’s toys that are WiFi enabled that can be hacked,” she said. “In hospitals, there are a lot of life-saving devices that are controlled by one central system that can be hacked. And the ability to hack into air traffic control and put signals into the sky that will make airplanes appear or disappear. And without a doubt we go into the marvelous world of dating apps.”
“CSI: Cyber” airs on CBS on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET