After 20 years administering justice in the US, NCIS has docked in Sydney Harbour for a sea change. NCIS: Sydney is the fifth series in the surprisingly huge crime franchise, and the first set outside the United States. And, like a sailor eager to flex his land legs, the show is having a lot of fun exploring the city, deciphering our slang and meeting our most dangerous residents (mostly animals). Finally, the harbour is safe again, having become a haven for crime since the Water Rats hung up their togs in 2001.
In the early episodes, NCIS: Sydney tackles whether a Navy Seal was eaten by a shark; a murder involving a venomous snake; and bar fights in The Rocks. There is danger everywhere, even on the roads, when the Yanks floor it in a car chase but forget to keep left. Australia is a cruel country.
NCIS: Sydney’s oddest quirk is how obsessed it is with Aukus. The acronym for Australia’s multibillion-dollar submarine deal with the UK and US is dropped so many times in the pilot that it threatens to lose meaning, and really stands out among throwaway gags about Vegemite, flat whites and our national obsession with nicknames.
But Aukus is the answer to the show’s central question: wait, why is the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service solving crimes each week down under?
In short: a US sailor at an Aukus announcement falls from a US warship (US territory) and dies in Sydney Harbour (Australian territory), resulting in NCIS and Australian federal police sharing jurisdiction for the investigation. Though reluctant to work together at first, the trope-filled team – the earnest and eager US agent, the sardonic brassy blonde, the socially awkward hacker whiz and the wise and witty pathologist – soon find their rhythm, even under the watchful eye of the US government and an Australian foreign affairs minister with a Gladys Berejiklian-like bob. The show operates on the dictionary definition of fridge logic: don’t ask questions, just accept it.
Some questions do have to be asked, for NCIS: Sydney sometimes carries an air of soft propaganda, normalising the idea that the US military can and should be able to police wherever it wants. Anti-Aukus protesters are portrayed as outcasts with anarchy neck tattoos, while illegal CIA cover-ups and surveillance are uncovered and met with helpless shrugs.
And it is definitely pro-Sydney propaganda (it was funded, in part, by a $291,188 subsidy from Screen Australia), following the lead of the Hawaii and New Orleans NCIS spin-offs by leaning into local flavour while retaining the procedural formula.
At least five minutes of any episode will be shots of the Sydney Opera House, but solving alarmingly frequent US Navy-related murders means the team must head to corners of the city that are less familiar to Americans. There are foot chases through Glebe’s graffiti-covered backstreets, bodies discovered at Ku-ring-gai Chase national park, and stops at character-filled pubs including the Hero of Waterloo and Bob Hawke’s Leisure Centre and Brewery.
The NCIS offices are at Walsh Bay, which means the gang can take in twilight hour with beers in hand as flying foxes glide overhead, practically screaming: “Where the bloody hell are ya?”
This is all presumably more glamorous than reality – the real NCIS field office is in Perth. Given the rate that people are murdered on this show, Western Australia’s capital would have been cleared out completely in a season.
But the flimsy premise of NCIS: Sydney is deceptively smart. The two US officers being transplanted to Australia sets up a proxy for international audiences who don’t always get our jokes: one US agent thinks Wagga Wagga is a made-up place.
NCIS is rarely referenced in popular culture (can you recall a single NCIS meme?), so it can be easy to overlook just how widely watched it is – and just how big NCIS: Sydney could be. The original series has more than 450 episodes across 20 seasons, having aired in more than 200 countries. It’s the third-longest-running US primetime drama, behind only Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU. NCIS was the highest-rating scripted drama on US television in 2021 and the second-most streamed show in the US in 2022. With NCIS and NCIS Hawai’i both delayed by writers’ and actors’ strikes, the Sydney spin-off has a real chance to scratch America’s itch, with the show streaming and airing on primetime there next week.
And for Australians, it reminds us of the power of the franchise’s excellent psytrance theme song, which begs to be blasted at a rave hidden in the underpasses of the M5. Maybe that’s a scene for season two?
NCIS: Sydney airs weekly on Channel 10 and is streaming on Paramount+. It will screen on CBS in the US from 14 November
