NCIS: New York premiere review: LL Cool J and Scott Caan start with a dead tugboat captain
The franchise that will not die sends its most durable agent home to Queens — and the early reviews say the fifth city is the charm.
The NCIS empire plants its flag in New York on Tuesday night, and the pilot's inciting corpse is pure local color: a tugboat captain, dead in an apparent suicide — except he's an old friend of Sam Hanna's, and Sam doesn't buy the "apparent" part. That's the whole engine of NCIS: New York's premiere: LL Cool J's agent, back in his hometown for the first time since NCIS: Los Angeles ended in 2023, working a case that's personal before it's procedural.
The surprise is the reception. TheWrap's review opens at the exact register CBS's marketing department dreams about:
"The greatest TV franchise in the world meets the greatest city in the world? How could CBS say no?"
What's actually working
- The partnership. Scott Caan plays Nick Schaeffer, a Bay Ridge product of a cop-and-firefighter family — and critics note he's playing notably more mature and polished than his Hawaii Five-0 archetype, with a "delightful" dynamic between the leads.
- LL Cool J, promoted. After 14 seasons as part of an ensemble and a recurring stint on NCIS: Hawai'i, this is his show — and per TheWrap he "effortlessly earns your engagement" with a more nuanced Sam than LA ever asked for.
- Actual New York. The production shot on location in Red Hook, Gerritsen Beach, and Central Park rather than faking the boroughs in Vancouver, and it shows.
- The bench: Jennifer Beals as the special agent in charge, Jacqueline Byers, Shane Harper, Devin Druid — plus a dog named Sid, because every NCIS needs a secret weapon.
The pedigree runs deep: R. Scott Gemmill, who ran NCIS: LA, wrote the pilot at LL Cool J's own urging, with Byron Balasco running the series day to day. The nitpick list from critics is, at this point, almost comically small — the loudest complaint is that the show has no real opening theme, just a title card, which for a franchise built on that gunshot-and-fanfare ritual reads as borderline sacrilege.
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NCIS: New York premieres Tuesday, October 6 on CBS, streaming next day on Paramount+ — the franchise's fifth American city, and on this evidence, not its weakest.
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