Yahoo News NCIS: Sydney Arrives Stateside: Grade the Aussie Offshoot’s Premiere
TV’s long-running NCIS franchise this week invited fans to the Land Down Under, with its first international offshoot in 20 years. Will you book a return trip?
Setting the stage for NCIS: Sydney, a U.S. Seaman on a U.S. nuclear sub parked in Sydney Harbour collapses and tumbles into the water, dead — and during an AUKUS ceremony, no less. (Cue opening credits set to zippy remix of OG NCIS theme!) The specific circumstances of the death lead to a jurisdictional battle/”pissing match” between arriving NCIS Special Agent Michelle Mackey (played by Legends of Tomorrow vet Olivia Swann), who’s out to solve the murder of a U.S. Seaman, and AFP (Australian Federal Police) Sergeant Jim “JD” Dempsey (played by Spartacus: War of the Damned‘s Todd Lasance), who means to investigate a death in his harbor.
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Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Susan Quinn (Glitch‘s Daniela Farinacci) settles things by declaring that NCIS will lead the investigation, with support from the AFP. We in turn meet cool-as-ice Mackey’s comparatively genial colleague, NCIS Special Agent DeShawn Jackson (Fate: The Winx Saga‘s Sean Sagar), plus JD’s team: AFP Liaison Officer Constable Evie Cooper (Bad Behaviour‘s Tuuli Narkle), Forensic Pathologist Dr. Roy Penrose (Blue Heelers‘ William McInnes) and interim Forensic Scientist Bluebird “Blue” Gleeson (Neighbours‘ Mavournee Hazel).
There’s also Colonel Richard Rankin (Hunters‘ Lewis Fitz-Gerald), a DoD attache who promises to be a bad penny that keeps turning up, and Fringe‘s Georgina Haig is briefly spotted as a member of a “sleeper cell” that infiltrated NAVSEA, and who gets away in the end.
During the investigation, we learn that Mackey is from Iowa, and that after being boxed out of the family cropdusting business, she joined the Marines. She at one point faced a court martial (that’s where DeShawn, a onetime JAG, first met her), but she got off; even so, she is (literally) said to not play well with others.
Evie, meanwhile, is pretty cheeky (keeping DeShawn on his toes); “Doc Roy” was once married, and has been in the business of “death” for some 40 years; and Blue (who is technically filling in for a guy who tore an ACL) has a PhD in quantum computing and is currently chasing a second PhD.
Upon stumbling on secrets that Rankin would rather not have come to light — and at one point secreting away the corpse of a second Seaman, to examine on their own! — the joint NCIS/AFP team gets dressed down, careers threatened, yada yada. But when Mackey, JD et al wind up uncovering the aforementioned sleeper cell, they do not lose their jobs but instead are told that their joint task force will remain in place, working out of the Walsh Bay warehouse space they had used as a hush-hush HQ.
What did you think of NCIS: Sydney‘s first episode of eight? Weigh in below!
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