23 years ago, “NCIS” had a completely different premise when Mark Harmon joined the series
When NCIS First premiering in 2003, it didn’t look like the global television phenomenon it would become. In its early days – when it was just a spin-off of I – the series had modest ambitions, low ratings, and a tone that leaned more toward procedural than personality.
But according to Mark Harmonwho headlined the show for nearly two decades as Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, NCIS was supposed to be something very different from the “murder a week” format it is now known for. In fact, the series that has since inspired five spin-offs, including the new prequel NCIS: Origins – was initially sold to him as a show based entirely on real-life Navy and Marine Corps cases.
The real premise behind ‘NCIS’ wasn’t the weekly murders
When Harmon first signed on in 2003, he wasn’t promised another CBS standard procedural. “When I first joined the show, part of what they sold me was that everything was going to be based on real cases,” Harmon said. The Hollywood Reporter. “But pretty soon it becomes a murder a week because it’s television, right?”
That pivot, he said, happened early. By the time Gibbs and his team found their stride, the series had relied on the tried-and-true formula of case-of-the-week storytelling, a structure that audiences recognized and continued to engage with. It worked like NCIS slowly climbed the ratings, eventually becoming the most-watched show on American television and spawning an empire.
Yet Harmon’s initial interest was in something more grounded – something closer to the real Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In recent years he has channeled this interest through non-fiction writing, co-writing The Ghosts of Honolulu And The ghosts of Panama with the old NCIS advise Leon Carroll Jr.. Both books explore real naval investigations, exactly the kind of stories Harmon imagined. NCIS I would say so.
NCIS in Real Life Isn’t Quite What You See on TV
To be fair, Harmon wasn’t wrong when he said that the real NCIS has stories worth telling. Today’s Naval Criminal Investigative Service, headquartered in Quantico, Virginia, investigates crimes related to the Navy and Marine Corps – from counterterrorism and economic fraud to espionage and internal misconduct.
“It’s entertainment,” NCIS communications director MaryAnn Cummings told USO.org of the show in 2016. “It’s the Hollywood version.” Real NCIS agents, she explained, are more like detectives than action heroes, and they rarely find themselves in the middle of car chases or turf wars.
The TV show also dramatized lab work – there’s no real-life equivalent to Abby Sciuto’s (Pauley Perrette) goth lab, nor a “Ducky” (David McCallum) performing autopsies for the agency. “It’s one of those entertainment things that everyone laughs about,” Cummings said.
However, the real agency appreciates this attention. The show’s worldwide popularity has raised public awareness of what NCIS actually does, even if the on-screen version is more flash than fact.
How ‘NCIS’ Became Today’s Juggernaut
This evolution from realism to entertainment has not been smooth. As Harmon remembered, NCIS didn’t start out as a success. “There were a lot of changes in those first three or four years,” he said. “People don’t realize it, but this show didn’t jump out at all.”
Eventually, NCIS looked at its whole thing – balancing Gibbs’ stoic leadership with humor, camaraderie and a found family dynamic. By season 3, the formula clicked. Fans stayed as much for the jokes as the business, and the series cemented its tone: part procedural, part workplace drama, all wrapped in military courage.
The principle of real agency may have been abandoned, but its influence persists. Technical advisor Carroll Jr., who served in the Marines, still helps ensure authenticity where it counts: in the dialogue, procedure, and moral center of the series. “You have a lot of people who work really hard to do the right thing every day,” Cummings said of the real-life, real-life teams. “Just like a military unit becomes a family…NCIS is a family.”
Would a “real-life” version of “NCIS” have worked?
If NCIS was content to dramatize real-life Navy and Marine Corps cases, it was perhaps more of a documentary drama than procedural comfort television. It was also perhaps too dark.
As one fan noted online, subsequent seasons have already strained credibility: “The forensics seem a little flimsier and more like magic, and the show just requires more suspension of disbelief.” » But this suspension is exactly what made NCIS work. It gave audiences larger-than-life heroes, high-stakes mysteries, and a sense of continuity that kept them coming back week after week.
Now with NCIS: Origins by revisiting Gibbs’ early years in 1990 – when the agency was still called NIS – Harmon has come full circle. As executive producer and narrator, he finally explores the historical, grounded version of the agency that first captured his imagination.
“It’s been historically interesting to me,” Harmon said. “You experience the agency in a different way than I did in the past. And you look at it in a different way too.” Two decades later, he’s getting the show he was sold for – but not in the way expected.
- Release date
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September 23, 2003
- Showrunner
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Donald P. Bellisario
- Directors
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Dennis Smith, Terrence O’Hara, Tony Wharmby, James Whitmore Jr., Thomas J. Wright, Michael Zinberg, Arvin Brown, Rocky Carroll, Diana Valentine, Leslie Libman, Tawnia McKiernan, Colin Bucksey, William Webb, Bethany Rooney, Alrick Riley, Jeff Woolnough, Alan J. Levi, Lionel Coleman, Martha Mitchell, Peter Ellis, Michael Weatherly, Edward Ornelas, Stephen Cragg, Tom Wright
- Writers
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George Schenck, Frank Cardea, Jesse Stern, John C. Kelley, Jennifer Corbett, Christopher Silber, Reed Steiner, Nicole Mirante-Matthews, Jack Bernstein, Scott J. Jarrett, Matthew R. Jarrett, Kimberly-Rose Wolter, Don McGill, Gil Grant, Frank Military, Nell Scovell, Steven Kriozere, Brian Dietzen, Kate Torgovnick May, Jeff Vlaming, Sydney Mitchel, Katie White, Richard C. Arthur, Laurence Walsh
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Sean Murray
Timothy McGee
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David McCallum
Dr. Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard
