NCIS: New Orleans
These NCIS agents don’t play by the rules in the hit action show’s new spin-off NCIS: New Orleans.
NCIS: New Orleans Season 1 Thursdays (from 2 April) M-Net 21:30
Why should Washington DC and Los Angeles have all the fun? Those action-hungry NCIS agents have a new branch in New Orleans, the home of jazz and the birthplace of Mardi Gras festivals. Explains Gary Glasberg, the creator of the NCIS (2003- current) franchise of their new spin- off: “Music, food, culture, art… at the end of the day, having that architecture, having that backdrop available to us is proving incredibly helpful. Not only from a location standpoint, but the kind of characters that we’re writing, to have so much to draw off – to have such a rich, vibrant community to make a part of the show is what’s separating it from other NCIS shows.”
MEET THE TEAM MEET THE TEAM
Dwayne “King” Pride (Scott
Bakula) is the Senior Special Agent in charge of the team. He loves jazz, food, his city and – above all – catching the bad guys.
CRIMES & PUNISHMENTS
Here are some of the crimes that the New Orleans team will investigate…
Christopher LaSalle (Lucas Black) is a Special Agent. Born in Alabama, he has a traditional way of doing things. He’s rough, smart and willing to take risks. Meredith Brody (Zoe McLellan) transferred from another investigative branch to NCIS. She’s trained in defusing bombs and has a black belt in karate. Dr Loretta Wade (CCH
Pounder) is the medical examiner in the branch, as well as the unofficial counsellor to the agents. Apart from her interest in biology, she likes jazz and hates conspiracy theories. Sebastian Lund (Ron Kerkovich) assists Dr Wade when he’s not heading up the tech department. While he enjoys being in front of his computer screen, he craves joining his teammates in the field. 1 Episode 1 takes the audience to the streets of downtown New Orleans where the “bangers” (or gangs) hang out. Dwayne swells up with emotion when he realises that a close friend and Naval petty officer may have left the Marines to join a notorious gang.
2 A murder case involving a terrorist gets a bit too dangerous, so the NCIS team from Washington step in to solve the riddle. Expect an appearance from Abby Sciuto and Special Agent DiNozzo (Pauley Perrette and Michael Weatherly) in episode 2 on 9 April.
3 An all- girl roadtrip turns into a horror story when three prisoners hijack their car in episode 3 on 16 April. The team learn that one of the captors poses a threat to national security and they rope in NCIS’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) to assist.
4 A Navy SEAL is murdered in a sorority house and his college girlfriend is the prime suspect in episode 4 on 23 April. Things take a dark turn when Dwayne discovers that the suspect has a shadier past than she’s letting on…
5 When a socialite is kidnapped, the New Orleans agents enlist the help of FBI Agent Fornell (Joe Spano) from NCIS in episode 5 on 30 April. He’s the FBI’s version of Gibbs.
DID YOU KNOW?
1 Scott’s character is based on real-life NCIS Agent D’Wayne Swear, who ran the criminal investigative office in New Orleans for 20 years. D’Wayne helped NCIS creator Gary Glasberg with the background research for the show and he’s the show’s technical director.
2 This isn’t the first time that Zoe’s appeared in an NCIS franchise. Her first appearance was in NCIS’s parent show JAG (1995-2005), where she played the role of Petty Officer Jennifer Coates in the final season.
3 LaSalle’s catchphrase (“It’s on like Donkey Kong”) is actually a reference to actor Lucas’s role in The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), where his character Sean Boswell assumes that his opponent’s initials “DK” stand for Donkey Kong.