Finally,due to the winning combination of technical wizardry and cluey crime-busting,a knotty puzzle will be solved,a culprit apprehended,and the team will smile knowingly at each other and triumph to fight another day. A guarantee of closure,that this will be a self-contained story resolved within a TV hour,comes with the territory.
It’s possible that you could watch the same episode again in a year and have no memory about who did what or why,and it kind-of doesn’t matter. What does is the way that the team works together and the assurance that they’ll solve the case. These are not the kind of crime stories that keep you awake at night,troubled by depictions of people’s viciousness and cruelty.
Little emotional investment is required. Viewers don’t know the victims before bodies are discovered and feel little attachment to them. They’re a necessary piece of the puzzle.
The compact,eight-part Sydney season could be seen as testing the water,taking advantage of the exchange rate and keeping things in the family as the Ten Network is a Down-Under branch of the Paramount-CBS empire. On the basis of the company’s crowing about the initial response to the spinoff,early signs are encouraging.
In Australia,it’s the most-watched local series since the Paramount+ launch in 2021. Given that viewers would’ve known what they were in for,it’s reasonable to assume that they’ll stay tuned because they’re unlikely to have been disappointed.
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NCIS:Sydney is slick,pacey and faithful to the format. Shot in bright colours under sunny skies,the city looks snazzy and provides a spectacular setting. For the benefit of the US market,it’s depicted as beautiful,exotic and slightly scary,a foreign destination that’s comfortingly familiar as a version of English is spoken,yet also a place abundant with threat. Early episodes manage to squeeze in deadly snakes,a shark attack and talk of venomous spiders.
The harbour and beaches prove magnetic for the producers. Of course,there’s the iconic bridge and if you started a drinking game involving shots of it,you’d be blotto by the end of the first episode. Beyond that,early episodes take in Woolloomooloo,Bondi,Maroubra,Malabar,The Rocks and Watson’s Bay,while NCIS HQ is established at the Walsh Bay piers.
Much is made of the culture-clash. After the foursome is established,the initial wariness gives way to respect and the type of camaraderie necessary to sustain the banter that’s key to the show’s tone. JD dubs Mackey “Macca”,because he’s Australian and we habitually assign nicknames as a sign of acceptance and affection.
Meanwhile,the sometimes-bewildered Americans try to get their heads around the local customs,humour,dialect and coffee preferences,and the Aussie vernacular is laid on with a trowel.
JD remarks that someone’s “telling porky pies” and someone else is “taking the piss”. He also explains to Macca that “septic”,in the local rhyming slang,means American:septic= septic tank= Yank. This might also be news to some locals (I’m one of them).
NCIS isn’t a franchise famed for its subtlety or surprises,and fans know that. The Sydney spin-off delivers exactly what’s expected,albeit in a spiffy new setting and with jokes about white-tailed spiders.
NCIS Sydney is on Paramount+
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