It’s a g’day to be an NCIS: Sydney fan, seeing as the franchise’s first international spinoff has been having all kinds of fun with its sophomore run, airing Fridays on CBS.
In fact, I have found NCIS: Sydney to be a perfect, often-superfun Friday-night hang, occupying — in a small way — a similar space as, say, Hawaii Five-0 or MacGyver.
For the uninitiated, NCIS: Sydney follows a team of U.S. NCIS Agents and Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers who have been grafted into a multi-national task force, to keep naval crimes in check in the most contested patch of ocean on the planet.
The team is led by NCIS Special Agent Michelle Mackey, played by Olivia Swann, and her 2IC AFP counterpart, Sergeant Jim “JD” Dempsey, played by Todd Lasance. The ensemble also includes Sean Sagar as NCIS Special Agent DeShawn Jackson, Tuuli Narkle as AFP Liaison Officer Constable Evie Cooper, Mavournee Hazel as AFP Forensic Scientist Bluebird “Blue” Gleeson, and William McInnes as AFP Forensic Pathologist Dr. Roy Penrose.
In a recent op-ed I did on the NCIS mothership finally breaking out of a Season 22 rut, I wrote that NCIS: Sydney is “NCIS (or more accurately, NCIS: Los Angeles) on a low dose.” Yes, it tackles serious topics/cases like the pop star who’d been drugged into compliance by a domineering father, but it’s more often the case that the series avails itself of its exotic environs — which is a refreshing departure from Yet Another Dead Petty Officer Found by a White Rail Fence.
What prompted this post was Sydney‘s latest outing, “Blood Is Thicker Than Vodka,” in which the discovery of an exsanguinated sailor — found in a coffin bobbing in Sydney Harbour — led Mackey, JD et al to a family that runs a trendy vodka label but also indulges itself in shots of, well, human blood. I didn’t know much about sanguinarians ahead of this episode, but NCIS: Sydney, bless its weird little soul, took the subculture pretty seriously (while also allowing team members tons of “sucks”/“fangs” wordplay).
In earlier Season 2 episodes, we saw DeShawn and Evie dress appropriately for a pirate-themed wedding held aboard the actual James Craig, a 19th-century sailing ship-turned-tour boat. The procedural put a fun spin on the tried-and-true foot chase by having Evie hop onto a zip line at one point. And a March episode revolved around the very niche, but very real, illegal abalone trade, which among other things got this Yank Googling “abalone.”
What I also love about Sydney is that, since it is still in its early goings, the “family”-building is robust and fresh, with many an episode involving playful teasing… welcome insights (or at least peeks) into characters’ pasts… and the occasional karaoke session to cap a case well-solved.
Oh, and it teaches us all kinds of colorful Aussie/British slang!
We will always need (and at this rate might always have!) NCIS. The high-octane NCIS: Los Angeles, Big Easy-based NCIS: New Orleans and gone-too-soon NCIS: Hawaii will always have special places in our hearts. NCIS: Origins is giving us interesting, often-moving insight its Gibbs’ and other characters’ pasts. And Paramount+’s upcoming NCIS: Tony & Ziva promises to deliver something quite different, following two former agents as they and their daughter are chased around Europe (or at least Budapest).
NCIS: Sydney, meanwhile, is the perfect medium-stakes, vibrantly cast, gorgeous-to-look at procedural to kick off your end-of-week, Friday-night decompression in front of the telly.
