Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

I watched NCIS Sydney

To be honest I watched the first episode which takes the total number of any kind of NCIS episodes I’ve watched up to the grand total of three. The epidemic of US Navy-themed crime has apparently spread across the Pacific.

The show uses the standard formula, charismatic lead, more youthful subordinate, avuncular pathologist and young nerd forensic but with the twist is that there are two charismatic leads and two subordinates – Australian and American. Avuncular pathologist and forensic nerd only come in Australian flavours.

Episode 1 throws a pair of NCIS agents together with a team from the Australian Federal Police who have to investigate the death of a sailor who falls of a US submarine and into Sydney Harbour. Technically I think Sydney Harbour is the jurisdiction of NSW Police but NCIS Canberra would be restricted to pedalo boat crimes and NCIS Jervis Bay would be far too obscure.

The choice of city is obvious from the opening shots which take in the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House before taking us to the naval base near Woolloomooloo. You really can’t go wrong with filming Sydney Harbour, it is genuinely photogenic and really does have visiting naval vessels in it. Apparently, the real NCIS does have an Australian sub-office but it is in Perth, which is a lovely city but lacks the kind of recognisable landmarks that invading aliens or kaiju like to destroy.

The story actually starts off fairly promising. A US nuclear submarine is visiting and at a ceremony where a government minister is celebrating the (real) AUKUS security agreement, a sailor collapses and falls dead into the harbour. To prevent a diplomatic incident the AFP and NCIS must join forces. Geopolitics, mismatched detectives? That’s promising material and as events progress we get to visit a drag queen at Bondi Beach, a pub in the Rocks, a chase through the backstreets of Glebe and a trip to the (real) Bob Hawke Beer & Leisure Centre. False leads and CIA shenanigans add further twists but then the whole story runs out of ideas and reveals that bad guys did it. The bad guys escape on a speed boat across the harbour which explodes.

Having done such a good job of not really solving the murders or catching the bad guys, the powers that be decide that the ad-hoc team is now a permanent NCIS/AFP outfit ready to solve all of the US Navy themed crime that occurs in or around the Opera House.

While the story goes nowhere, it wasn’t particularly embarrassing. If felt like what it is, a cross between an Australian cop show and the NCIS franchise. There were some forced examples of Australianisms to bamboozle the US agents but the joke about the main NCIS agent not believing that Wagga Wagga is a real place was well played. No thong jokes yet.

I couldn’t work this into the review but I feel like this quote from the official AFP website is worth highlighting:

“The idea of federal policing, however, can be traced back to 1917, when protestors threw eggs at then-Prime Minister William Hughes.”

https://www.afp.gov.au/about-us/our-agency

Despite this imminent threat, egg throwing at prime ministers remains rampant.

camestrosfelapton

62 responses to “I watched NCIS Sydney”

      • In the run-up to the Sydney Olympics, they had a display going around for advertising. It was a smaller inflatable version of the Opera House (you could only go in the biggest bit, I think the machinery was all behind in the other scoops). It was showing a video of how scenic Sydney and Australia are and plugging the games, with an actual Australian to talk to you and sell Olympic and Aussie swag and provide helpful brochures on travel.

        They turned up at the local mall. BFF and I had nothing to do one long summer afternoon, so we drove over there, wondering exactly where it was, as we had only been informed “parking lot”. Turned a corner, saw a 15-20′ high Opera House off in the way farthest side of the lot, and parked over there at the edge. Mildly entertaining, and blessedly air conditioned. I think maybe we bought one of those koalas that clip onto things. Then we parked closer to the mall to be in their A/C and bought some fancy candy. It beat staying home and sweating while the husbands were at their air conditioned offices and the cats were grumpy puddles.

        That’s the closest I’ll ever be.

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  4. Some people don’t quite believe Niceville, near where I used to live, is a real place.
    My wife still snickers that NC’s Charlotte airport is abbreviated CLT (“you’re going to land on the clit!”).

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    • The 1970’s UK sitcom “The Good Life” was set in Surbiton – which I didn’t realise was a real suburb in south-west London until the 1990s. Just sounds like a joke name for a non-descript middle class London suburb.

      Australia has Townsville which is also the name of the town where the PowerPuff girls live.

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    • I was today years old when I realized that Belgravia was a section of London and not a made up central European country. It just sounds like one of those made up countries from the original Mission Impossible TV series. And while I had heard of the Sherlock Holmes story title, I’d never read it.

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      • I first encountered the word “lesbian” in a Reader’s Digest article discussing in shocked tones that a court had recently ruled the book “Lesbian Roommate” was not pornography. I read the article over several times trying to figure out what was so obscene about having a roommate from Lesbia.

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        • I don’t recall when I learned it was a real place, but I always had the vaguest conception of it being “somewhere in or near London but not the East End or any castles”.

          I didn’t confirm it was actually real till the day I went to the British Museum, and had lunch with a friend who worked at UCL. I am still in touch with the people I was with (we’d all met online in Usenet days), and I have photos and I bought a Rosetta Stone t-shirt. Tangible.

          (My English friends thought “been there, done that, got the t-shirt” was a joke. Till I emerged from the gift shop. The eldest of the kids was greatly amused.)

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  5. Perth, which is a lovely city but lacks the kind of recognisable landmarks that invading aliens or kaiju like to destroy.

    Richard Court would be so disappointed to hear that, after spending all so much money on his Bell Tower.

    However, as someone who lives here, I must agree. Perth’s main distinguishing features are Kings Park (Mt Eliza), the Darling Escarpment, and maybe Cottesloe Beach. Fremantle harbour is functional rather than picturesque, and while we are up to more than one skyscraper on the Terrace (St George’s Terrace, the main commercial hub of the city – and the state) they really aren’t the sorts of things you’d write home to Mum praising to the skies.

    Plus, of course, we have enough trouble convincing a certain type of Murrican that Australia exists in the first place; let’s not stretch their credulity too far by insisting there’s more than one city here.

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      • Well your TVs rotate the picture 180 obviously. If you watch any Baz Lurhman directors cut, you’ll see the film as intended with everybody’s head near the bottom of the screen. Of course in Australia, the TVs are upside down as well, so it all looks fine.

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        • Are all the TVs on their side on the equator, and do you have to turn your head in an opposite way depending on if you’re watching material from which hemisphere, and doesn’t that mess up the 16:9 picture?

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    • The Bell Tower is more like a thing Doctor Who discovers is actually a Dalek plot to move the Moon out of orbit than a thing that Godzilla would loom over. I 100% think Doctor Who should visit Perth.

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    • My BIL works with someone who doesn’t believe Australia is real. How he (the BIL) and my sister got those photos of themselves at the Harbour last summer? Dunno; painted backdrops or something, I guess.

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  8. I did not realise the AFP’s origin story was that Billy Hughes couldn’t find any police forces willing to stop people throwing eggs at him, so he decided to invent his own…

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  11. I’ve watched more than my share of the various NCIS shows, because my Mom liked to watch them. I think NCIS Los Angeles was my favourite, because it was just fun watching those characters interact and it was obvious that the actors were really enjoying themselves. I’m not even sure if they had an actual script or if the actors were just improvising the banter. The plots were completely bonkers, of course, but all of the NCIS shows had bonkers plots.

    Plus, NCIS Los Angeles not only featured Linda Hunt as the boss, but also strongly implied that she was running the entire NCIS and that whoever was shown as the director in NCIS Prime (Rocky Carroll mostly, but there were others) was just a figurehead. Plus, Linda Hunt’s character apparently was involved in every important historical event of the past fifty years and seemed to be really eager to play matchmaker for her various agents and has apparently been doing that for fifty years as well (the charismatic lead guy played by Chris O’Donnell was the orphaned kid of two of her previous agents, a Russian dissident and the daughter of a Romani mob family – yes, really.). So in my head canon, Linda Hunt’s character is either a Time Lord or a Bene Gesserit or both, which made the show even more fun.

    Alas, my Mom is no longer well enough to watch TV and there are things I like a lot more than NCIS, so I’m unlikely to ever watch the Australian version. Though I’m eagerly awaiting NCIS Bremerhaven.

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    • “Linda Hunt as the boss, but also strongly implied that she was running the entire NCIS”
      DC’s Future Quest comic of five years back (mashing all of Hanna Barbera’s 1960s adventure shows into one story) has the female agent working as Birdman’s handler turn out to be the head of the agency, Falcon-7. As she explains it, she couldn’t bear to quit fieldwork so she created a new apparent head who’s just an image on Birdman’s monitor screen.

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    • Linda Hunt alone was justification for that show’s existence, plus the other actors did well too. IIRC, even Rocky Carroll deferred to her.

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  12. Episode 1 leaves much to be desired. It falls short in suspense, creativity, and action. Main female lead has the feel of a contrived character and a horrible casting job, in my opinion. Same short comings as NCIS HAWAII. Forcing Woke agenda into the story line most certainly seals the fate of this new show. I expect ratings will dwindle unless a better script and better female lead appears. Love the Aussie back drop. That will help the short comings initially! TBD ….

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    • I just double checked my copy of the woke agenda and item 5 was “police are bad” and item 6 was “US military is bad” and item 7 was “US military acting extra-territorially as the police force in another soveriegn nation to further the reach of the US Navy in South East Asia and the Pacific is very much not a good thing”

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  13. You mentioned invading aliens and kaiju. If there’s previous cinematic history of giant monsters attacking in Sydney Bay, could you give me any titles? I ask because I’ve actually been planning to draw something involving giant monsters in Sydney Bay and I don’t want to exactly repeat an existing thing.

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    • The Harbour bridge gets it in Pacific Rim (or at least it did in promotional material – I don’t recall the sequence in the film). Apparently Godzilla has a go at the city in a 2004 movie.

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      • Correction, it wasn’t Godzilla but “Zilla” who attacks:
        “odzilla Final Wars
        Godzilla and Zilla face off in Sydney in Godzilla Final Wars

        One day, as kaiju appeared all over the world, the monster Zilla appeared in Sydney, wreaking havoc on the populace. Suddenly, a UFO appeared over the city and teleported Zilla away.

        Later, when the Xiliens’ plan was exposed and Godzilla was freed from Antarctica, the Controller of Planet X teleported Zilla back to Sydney to destroy Godzilla. Zilla lunged at Godzilla, but Godzilla used his tail to smack Zilla into the Sydney Opera House. Godzilla then blasted Zilla with his atomic breath, annihilating both Zilla and the famous landmark. ” https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Sydney

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        • The head alien then yells, “I knew that tuna-eating monster was no good!”

          Godzilla, meanwhile, barely breaks stride.

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    • Some sort of tentacled kaiju would be good for destroying the bridge. If it’s not too close to “It Came From Beneath the Sea” or other B&W monster movies where ports were attacked.

      I dunno, bro and I watched all the Creature Features growing up. Plus I have discovered there’s a whole lot of purported tentacle critters under various bridges.

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    • You get a shot of one of the downed alien vessels crashed into Opera House at the end of Independence Day IIRC, but you have to watch all the way through Independence Day to see it, which you may or may not consider worth the trouble…

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  14. I only know about Wagga Wagga because my home town of Leavenworth, Kansas is a sister city of it, and so had a street called Wagga Wagga Drive. I say “had” because it was renamed at some point, which seems pretty ungracious to me (probably some xenophobic nonsense). No word if anyone has proposed renaming Leavenworth Drive in Wagga Wagga in retaliation.

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  15. Watched it last night. Entertaining enough, solid middle-brow. As Cam said, Aussie cop show meets NCIS. Tiny forensic genius is of course a polymath. Avuncular doc is very avuncular and the beard is impressive. US subordinate seems to really enjoy Sydney.

    Nice scenery, sets up the premise and characters, and an overall arc of needing to capture the shadowy figures behind this whole thing, since the bad guys who blowed up real good were merely hired henchmen under control of the mysterious blonde woman.

    I was wondering when they filmed this, what with the strikes. A while ago, I guess, to have several Americans in it?

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    • At File770, Cat pointed out that the American leads are actually British actors. The whole thing dodged the strike, which is bad if you see it as a US network using the setting as a means of circumventing the strike. Less bad if you see it as an Australian TV show borrowing a US show’s branding.

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