Topical TV

The sound of gunfire ricochets inside a minaret as a private in the U.S. Marine Corps shoots a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi.

Members of the camera crew remove their earplugs and discuss whether the scene went OK or needs a retake. It doesn’t.

“Death at the Mosque,” shooting in this suburb north of Los Angeles, is an upcoming episode of “JAG,” the military law series that airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on CBS.

This season, war has been featured prominently in several episodes reflecting real events in Iraq.

“How we approach the stories I think probably changes from month to month, not unlike the mood of the country – first some enthusiasm, then some doubt, some reservations,” producer Peter Dunne says.

“Our stories concern themselves more with the humane issues, the peace issues rather than the war issues … because it’s going to be the humanity that solves this war, not the weapons.”

Local terrain in the hills visible from Dunne’s Santa Clarita, Calif., office provides convincing settings for Iraq as well as Afghanistan.

The series has always had cooperation from all branches of the armed services and often films on military bases, including the San Diego Naval Air Station and the Marines’ Camp Pendleton nearby.

“You see all the young families there … and how much we are like them, but are not suffering the same,” says Dunne. “We all have spouses, parents, children, whom we expect to find in the house at night when we get home, but they don’t have that.”

Created by Don Bellisario, the series follows the personal and professional trials of the Judge Advocate General Corps, the lawyers who investigate, prosecute and defend cases involving Navy and Marine personnel.

The stars of the legal team are Lt. Col. Sarah “Mac” MacKenzie, played by Catherine Bell, and Cmdr. Harmon “Harm” Rabb, played by David James Elliott, who’s leaving the series at the end of this season.

Chris Beetem, recently of daytime’s “As The World Turns,” has just been signed up as Lt. Gregory Vukovic, a charming but ethically defiant new member of the “JAG” team who happens to be assigned to the minaret shooting.

Bell, whose toddler daughter is with her as she waits in her trailer for her next scene, mentions working at Pendleton on the day last month when 30 Marines and a Navy sailor were killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq.

“Meeting guys who have lost their friends – or a young woman with a beautiful little 6-month-old baby whose father left for the war when the baby was 3 weeks old – you meet these people, and man, this is definitely intense,” she says.

“I think after 9/11 things felt different. It felt like we had more of a responsibility in how we represented what was happening, and also that people were paying closer attention to that, learning more about the military through our show, hopefully.”

Adds Dunne: “I don’t think we can afford to be grim all the time, but I think we have to be honest, and I don’t think there is anything less entertaining about an honest drama.”

“JAG” was canceled by NBC in 1996 after one season, then was picked up in January 1997 by CBS. It won’t be known until May whether the series will earn an 11th season, but Dunne feels the odds are on its side.

“I don’t think there will ever be a shortage of good drama set in the military,” he says. “It’s one of the four main franchises – along with police work, law and medicine – that have held up, because they all provide the element of life or death.

“This war, like every war that we have fought, changes law,” says Dunne. “We try to examine that and put our JAG officer-heroes in the center of this firestorm of what now works and what doesn’t work in the legal system. …

“Our characters, though they are not fighting the war, are fighting to interpret its effect on this country.”