NCIS: Sydney, the Australian spin-off of the NCIS franchise, received a bag of mixed reviews upon its debut in 2023. The first season of the action series didn’t quite capture the interest of audiences, with a total of 28% Rotten Tomatoes score as of this writing. Season 1, however, proved to be well-received by some critics, garnering a 73% score. With NCIS: Sydney Season 2 premiering on CBS this Friday, February 7, series creator Morgan O’Neill has provided some details about what viewers can expect from the second season, saying that the team behind the spin-off has become “more ambitious” in terms of the production quality as well as the show’s whole story.
NCIS has been one of the longest-running television series in history. It has spawned six spin-offs, with NCIS: Origins as the latest addition to the ever-growing media franchise. NCIS: Sydney, on the other hand, served as the first-ever NCIS spin-off outside the United States. When asked by TVLine how they would compare Season 2 to Season 1, O’Neill said that getting to know the characters more during the first season allowed them to raise the stakes for Season 2. He told the outlet: “I think, on a global scale, we’ve just been more ambitious — in terms of the production values, in terms of the breadth of the stories we’re telling. But one of the things that’s allowed us to be ambitious is that we now know the characters. We’re not in those first-season days where you’re still trying to work out who they are and how they interact with one another and what the allegiances are, who likes what and who doesn’t.”
Taking the franchise out of the U.S. was a risk. Fortunately, the first international venture was a success and has become the most-streamed CBS network premiere ever on Paramount+.
Now that the characters have already been properly introduced in Season 1, Season 2 provided an opportunity for the creatives to peel back more layers. “Now that we’ve established those characters, we have that fabulous opportunity to deepen and to peel back the lid and to actually see what makes these guys tick in a much more profound way, and lean into what we’ve discovered are the qualities of the characters that we like the most.”
Who Stars in ‘NCIS: Sydney’?
NCIS: Sydney follows the brilliant team of U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) agents and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) as they work together to fight naval crimes. The team is led by Legends of Tomorrow’s Olivia Swann as NCIS Special Agent-in-Charge Michelle Mackey. She is joined by Todd Lasance as AFP Second-in-Command JD Dempsey, Sean Sagar as NCIS Special Agent DeShawn Jackson, Tuuli Narkle as AFP Liaison Officer Constable Evie Cooper, Mavournee Hazel as AFP forensic scientist Blue Gleeson, and William McInnes as AFP forensic pathologist Roy Penrose.
NCIS: Sydney Season 2 airs on February 7. Season 1 is available to stream on Paramount+.