Naval Criminal Investigative Service (TV Series)

NCIS (promoted as Navy NCIS in season one), aka Navy NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service or NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, is an American police procedural television series revolving around a fictional team of special agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which conducts criminal investigations involving the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

The concept and characters were initially introduced in a two-part episode of the CBS series JAG (episodes 8.20 and 8.21). The show, a spin-off from JAG, premiered on September 23, 2003 on CBS and, to date, has aired six full seasons. Donald Bellisario, who created JAG, as well as the well-known series' Magnum, P.I. and Quantum Leap, is co-creator and executive producer of NCIS. NCIS was originally referred to as "Navy NCIS", however "Navy" was later dropped as it was redundant. NCIS will return for a seventh season on September 22, 2009 at 8pm and will be followed by its spin-off series NCIS: Los Angeles at 9pm on CBS.

Premise
NCIS is a television series that follows a fictional team of Naval Criminal Investigative Service Major Case Response Team (MCRT) special agents, headquartered at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.. It is described by the actors and producers (on special features on DVD releases in the USA) as being distinguished by its comedy elements, ensemble acting and character-driven plots.

NCIS is the primary law enforcement and counter-intelligence arm of the United States Department of the Navy, which includes the United States Marine Corps. NCIS investigates all major criminal offenses (felonies), those crimes punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice by confinement of more than one year, within the Department of the Navy. This can be seen when the “NCIS team” is frequently assigned to high-profile cases such as the death of the President's military aide, a bomb situation on a U.S. Navy warship, the death of a celebrity on a reality show set on a USMC base, terrorist threats, and kidnappings.

The “NCIS team” is led by Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon). Gibbs’ team is composed of Special Agent and Senior Field Agent Anthony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), Special Agent Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) and Mossad Liaison Officer Ziva David (Cote de Pablo), who replaced Caitlin 'Kate' Todd (Sasha Alexander) when she was shot by Ari Haswari (Rudolf Martin) at the end of season two. Ari himself was then killed by his half-sister Ziva in the beginning of season three. The team is assisted in their investigations by Chief Medical Examiner Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum), Forensic Specialist Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) and Assistant Medical Examiner Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen).

NCIS is currently led by Director Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll). The first Director seen in the series, Thomas Morrow, (Alan Dale) left after a promotion to Deputy Director of DHS. Jenny Shepard (Lauren Holly) was appointed Director after Morrow; she was killed in a shootout at the end of the fifth season.

Name
Prior to the launch of the first season, advertisements on CBS identified the show as "Naval CIS." By the time of the launch of the first episode, NCIS was airing under the name Navy NCIS, the name it held for the entire first season. Since the "N" in NCIS stands for "Naval,” the name Navy NCIS was technically redundant (an example of RAS syndrome). The decision to use this name was reportedly made by CBS, over the objections of Bellisario, in order to:
 * Attract new viewers (particularly those of JAG), who might not know the NCIS abbreviation.
 * Disambiguate between NCIS and the similarly-themed and similarly-spelled CBS series CSI and its spinoffs. (The original title, for instance, was often misquoted as "Navy CSI").

After its successful first season, the name of the series was shortened to NCIS.

Filming location
NCIS is set in the Washington D.C. area but is filmed in Santa Clarita, California.
 * The sound stages are in Santa Clarita, California
 * The series is shot throughout southern California

Crew changes
It was reported in May 2007 that Donald Bellisario would be stepping down from the show. Due to a disagreement with series star Mark Harmon, Bellisario's duties as show runner/head writer were to be tasked to long-time show collaborators, including co-executive producer Chas. Floyd Johnson and Shane Brennan, with Bellisario retaining his title as Executive Producer.

Episodes
Six seasons of NCIS have been aired, with the sixth season ending on May 19, 2009. A total of 138 episodes have aired as of May 19, 2009.

American ratings
Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of NCIS.


 * Note: Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.


 * NCIS became a top 10 program in its fifth season, averaging 15.65 million viewers, despite a WGA strike. Notably, the show is one of the few that has actually increased in viewership as it progresses, as opposed to most shows which decrease in popularity as they fade, and has even been able to finish a strong second to Fox's American Idol, a time slot seen by many as a "death slot" for most series.
 * NCIS delivered its largest audience ever to date, in the sixth season episode "Silent Night", soaring to 19.86 million viewers. It won its time slot in households (12.0), viewers (19.94m), adults 25–54 (5.8) and second in adults 18–49 (4.0; behind NBC's season finale of The Biggest Loser). NCIS posted its best ever delivery in households and viewers, best adults 25–54 performance since October 16, 2007 and matched season high adults 18–49 delivery.

Other ratings
DVR ratings:
 * The show ranked number four in DVR playback (2.714 million viewers), according to Nielsen prime DVR lift data from January 5–11, 2009.
 * The show ranked number thirteen in DVR playback (2.743 million viewers), according to Nielsen prime DVR lift data from February 9–15, 2009.
 * The show ranked number nine in DVR playback (3.007 million viewers), according to Nielsen prime DVR lift data from April 6–12, 2009.

Cable ratings:
 * The show ranked number eighteen (4.793 million viewers) in the list of Nielsen Ratings top twenty most-watched cable shows for the week ending January 25, 2009.
 * The show ranked number ten (4.535 million viewers), twelve (4.264 million viewers), thirteen (4.221 million viewers), fifteen (4,161 million viewers), seventeen (4.132 million viewers), and twenty (4.081 million viewers) in the list of Nielsen Ratings top twenty most-watched cable shows for the week ending March 1, 2009.
 * The show ranked sixteen (4.091 million viewers), seventeen (4.084 million viewers), eighteen (4.072 million viewers), and twenty (4.006 million viewers) in the list of Nielsen Ratings top twenty most-watched cable shows for the week ending March 29, 2009.
 * The show ranked number five (4.492 million viewers), six (4.467 million viewers), eight (4.394 million viewers), nine (4.214 million viewers), fifteen (3.962 million viewers), and seventeen (3.8.58 million viewers) in the list of Nielsen Ratings top twenty most-watched cable shows for the week ending May 3, 2009.

DVD releases
All five seasons of NCIS have been released as full-season boxed sets in Regions 1, 2 and 4. The sixth season is due to be released in Region 1 on August 25, 2009. Note also that the first season DVD release omits the two-part introductory episode that aired as part of the eighth season of JAG.

Soundtrack
CBS Records, announced in December 2008 the release of the show's first soundtrack has been set for February 10, 2009. According to the NCIS soundtrack website, The Official TV Soundtrack will be a two-disc set that includes brand new songs from top artists featured prominently in upcoming episodes of the series as well as the show’s original theme by Numeriklab (available commercially for the first time) and a remix of the theme by Ministry. The soundtrack website has run website contests as well as playing previews of the soundtrack CD's.

Spin-off
CBS has picked up an NCIS spin-off series with the title NCIS: Los Angeles. Filming began in February 2009, with the characters introduced in a two-part NCIS episode entitled "Legend" which aired on April 28, 2009 and May 5, 2009. The characters listed were: G. Callen, Lara Macy, Nate "Doc" Getz, Kensi Blye, and Sam Hanna. Crew members will include Michael B. Kaplan, Lev L. Spiro, Jerry London, Sheldon Epps and Mark Saraceni.

Chris O'Donnell plays the lead character, G. Callen. LL Cool J, plays the role of Special Agent Sam Hanna, an ex-Navy SEAL, who works in the undercover unit of NCIS in Los Angeles, and is also fluent in Arabic and an expert on Middle Eastern culture." Louise Lombard, Peter Cambor, and Daniela Ruah were confirmed to be cast as leads of the new spin-off, playing the female lead (called "Lara"), a psychologist (called "Nate") and forensic investigator (called "Kensi") respectively.