“Back in force.”
From murder and espionage to terrorism and stolen submarines, a team of special agents investigates any crime that has any connection to Navy and Marine Corps personnel, regardless of rank or position.
Next episode: S24 E3 Sleeping Dogs (Oct 20, 2026)
Latest episode: S24 E2 Clean Slate (Oct 13, 2026)
Despite a bomb attack on Gibbs and the team, duty continues to call for these special agents as they try to regroup and put the pieces back together.
When Season 10 ended in the series' biggest cliffhanger, the NCIS was virtually disbanded and Gibbs was aiming a rifle at the FBI agent responsible.
In Season 12, Gibbs and McGee travel to Russia to retrieve a computer expert and get into an ongoing battle with mercenary Sergei Mishnev.
Following the unexpected departure of a key member, the NCIS team regroups and recruits several new faces, including a former MI6 operative.
I keep circling the same question with NCIS: how did a procedural about naval crimes outlive presidential administrations, prestige-TV booms, and half the supposedly future-proof shows that came after it? It's easy to sneer at the series people leave on while folding laundry. latestnetflix.com's read is that but writing it off as background comfort misses how carefully Donald P.
Bellisario built the machine.
Bellisario, a former Marine, wasn't trying to reinvent the procedural when he spun this off from JAG in 2003. He was tuning it. The result plays less like a gritty crime drama than a workplace comedy that periodically remembers a petty officer has been murdered.
The bullpen scenes are bright, flat and aggressively unglamorous. If you're looking for cinematic mood, that can feel limiting. To me, it's part of the appeal.
The show chases routine, not revelation: the comfort of familiar people doing work they understand.
The emotional heft often lives in the actors' bodies. Sean Murray's Timothy McGee is the clearest example. Early on, Murray plays him as apologetic momentum, hunched shoulders and frantic typing, a guy who seems unsure whether he has earned the badge on his belt.
"A steady, formula-driven military crime procedural that thrives on character chemistry and comfort viewing but loses spark as beloved cast members depart and plots grow more melodramatic."
The early and middle years offer a tight blend of self-contained naval investigations, humor, and a distinctive ensemble headed by strong personalities like Gibbs, DiNozzo, Abby, and McGee, making it an addictive comfort watch. As the show ages, cast departures, more repetitive cases, and a heavier emphasis on personal drama over military investigations wear it down, and some feel it peaked after the original team began to break apart.
Susan Bluestein kept a list. Alec Baldwin. Chris Cooper. Clive Owen. Kevin Bacon. Tom Berenger. Val Kilmer. Charlie Sheen. Aidan Quinn. Patrick Swayze. Harrison Ford's name got tossed in the room. Nobody made him an offer. Scott Glenn was in play for Gibbs and for Ducky. Andrew McCarthy sat with Donald P. Bellisario. Then Bluestein asked about Mark Harmon, the actor she had already cast as John Dillinger in 1991. latestnetflix.com's view is that cBS assumed they would lose him and walk the rest of the names.Harmon met Bellisario and said yes.
That is how NCIS got a face. The origin around him was a fight.
Bellisario and Don McGill built it as a two-episode backdoor inside JAG in spring 2003. The first pitch was Law & Order in the Navy. Cops, then courtroom. Bellisario killed the lawyers. Les Moonves liked the investigation hour and Harmon's test numbers. The series opened 23 September 2003 under the title Navy NCIS, a redundant name meant to calm the CSI shop, which did not want a forensics rival with a similar acronym. McGill wrote the backdoor and a couple of early hours, then left after a falling out with Bellisario he still will not unpack.
The studio did not want David McCallum as Ducky. Bellisario said if they would not cast him, there was no show. Robyn Lively played the original female agent in the JAG two-parter. CBS recast. Sasha Alexander signed two seasons. In year two she told Bellisario the hours were too long. He lightened her load by putting a bullet through her head in the last two minutes of the season two finale. They printed that page once and collected it after the read. They shot an alternate ending so spouses would not leak it.
Director James Whitmore Jr. Called Bellisario a Vesuvius of a man. If the script was wrong on shoot day, Bellisario tore it up. By year four Harmon, on set at 6:30 a.m. Five days a week, told the building the process was too hard. He never said fire Don. The network asked Bellisario to work from a distance. By year five he was gone. Bellisario says it was his call. Charles Floyd Johnson, stuck in the middle, still says the two people who got the show standing were Bellisario and Harmon.
People kept leaving the orange bullpen. Cote de Pablo did eight years. Johnson told her to ride the horse. She did not. Michael Weatherly went to Bull. Pauley Perrette left after a fight over Harmon's dog, which Johnson said bit someone on set. In 2019 Perrette posted that she was terrified of Harmon. That is her account. It was never litigated in public as a settled fact.,
Johnson thought Harmon's exit was the death knell. On The Kelly Clarkson Show the actor said he was tired, and that the first day they worked 22 hours. He stayed for four episodes of season 19 so CBS would renew, then Gibbs told McGee he was not going back. The hour aired 11 October 2021. They sold Gary Cole as a man who might not stay, not as the new Gibbs.,,
Harmon still produces. He narrates NCIS: Origins, with Austin Stowell as 1991 Gibbs at Camp Pendleton. The CBS trailer calls it the story he never told. Gibbs living in Alaska is the honest path, Harmon said later. Never count him out is still the house line.,
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