Five pulled the plug on a special episode of the television crime series CSI at the last moment yesterday, prompting a deluge of complaints.

The broadcaster felt it would have been insensitive to air the two hour special programme, which featured a suicide bombing, just hours after it became clear that suicide attackers were responsible for last Thursday's atrocity in London in which 52 people are known to have died.

Special branch revealed in a statement at 5pm that all the four bombs in London were carried by bombers, who were blown up alongside their innocent victims.

"We had debated whether to air the show for several days, and had at first decided to go ahead," the broadcaster explained.

"But as new details emerged yesterday, we reconsidered and decided that it was insensitive to broadcast it after all. By the time we took the decision, there was nothing that most newspaper reviewers could do."

The decision was taken at around 7pm, by which time newspapers could not react. Reviews of the show that did not air appeared in The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The Independent. Today, Five received 500 complaints.

The show will be aired next Tuesday. Five believes that a short delay will allow feelings to cool sufficiently for the programme to be transmitted.

Despite pulling the sought after show -- which attracted 34 million viewers when it aired in the US -- two repeated CSI episodes attracted audiences of 3.5 million and 2.7 million respectively, helping Five to an above average 9.4 percent share for the evening.

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