Whatever will become of CBS in the monopolistic morass that never should have happened, I can’t say and, it’s too soon to tell. But for the moment it seems very much like itself, fielding a good old-fashioned fall season with premieres of three new series — a franchise procedural, a supernatural sitcom and a legal dramedy — all of which have ties to earlier CBS shows.
The latest in the “NCIS” family of city-coded series, “NCIS: New York,” which premiered Tuesday, puts LL Cool J, formerly of “NCIS: Los Angeles” and “NCIS: Hawai’i” and something of a network ambassador, back in the saddle as senior special agent Sam Hanna. The pilot (all that was available to see as of this writing) begins with a Bond-like prologue set in Dubai — slick suit, keen gadgets, giant melee with half a dozen villains superheroically dispatched. The operation causes him to miss a phone call from the son of an old friend who, by the time Sam calls back, will be dead in Central Park, an apparent suicide — which no one but the NYPD believes, cops typically being slow in such series. Not so says Sam, who attaches himself — temporarily, he thinks — to the NCIS New York branch, headed by Jennifer Beals as assistant special agent-in-charge Robyn Wells. This time, and probably not for the last time, it’s personal.
Wells gives him a partner, Scott Caan’s Nick Schaeffer, a talky little New Yorker, who says things like, “I’m no rocket surgeon,” and they set off through the city’s many neighborhoods, identified in screen-filling outline type — Bushwick, Soho, Diamond District, Red Hook, Gerritsen Beach. Even the BQE gets a title. Filling out the team that makes every “NCIS” cast a family are special agent Addison “Addy” Ross (Jacqueline Byers), ponytailed, humorous; special agent Wyatt Sellers (Shane Harper), recently of Alaska, a milk drinker, just dumped by his fiancee; and the requisite “weird” (their word) tech wizard Sean Sullivan (Devin Druid), who comes across as a less perverse version of Roddy Ho in “Slow Horses.”
Clue leads to clue in next to no time, this being an episodic show that needs to tie a bow around an investigation in something like 42 minutes. I’m going to assume that anyone who loves “NCIS” with its combination of Scooby Gang teamwork, sentimentality, action and wiseacre banter will feel happy here (“Welcome to Brooklyn,” says Nick, as bullets fly. “It didn’t change that much,” says Sam, a native). Looking toward Manhattan from beneath the Williamsburg Bridge, Nick convinces Sam that New York is where he ought to stay. Then they drive off for a soul food breakfast.
In the spirit, tee-hee, of the network’s “Ghosts,” and, indeed, created by its developers Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, comes another supernatural domestic comedy, the likable, clever “Eternally Yours.” Premiering Thursday, it’s a sort of bourgeois, non-gothic “What We Do in the Shadows” set among a group of vampires living together in Seattle. (It’s cloudy there, they like that.) Charles (Ed Weeks), the head of the coven, and Liz (Allegra Edwards) have been married for 500 years and have grown tired of each other, as well one might, especially of Charles, who’s a bitter pill. (“Life is tough,” he says, “and then you continue to not die.”)
Living with them are adopted daughter, Emma (Helen J. Shen), who has been quietly dating Max (Jaren Lewison), a human regular guy; Jesse, an amiable muscleman; his aging human wife, Phyllis (Rose Abdoo), whose mind he wipes whenever she overhears vampire business — she sees Jesse, whom she met in 1989 when “we were both 28,” as simply well preserved — and twin half-vampire sons, Henry (Shylo Molina), who has all the good vampiric abilities, and Mort (Tristan Michael Brown), who can talk to the dog. (The technical nature of some of these relations is murky.)
No one sleeps in a coffin and everyone seems to go out during the day for work or school. Liz teaches history at a local college; Charles, who doesn’t approve of her working because he’s very old-fashioned, is a financial planner; Jesse is a personal trainer who covers himself in spray tan so he’ll be visible in the mirrors at the gym; and Emma is a veterinarian. Though Charles would prefer to, they don’t feed on people because, says Liz, “it’s not nice.” (It’s the usual substitution of animal blood.) As in “Ghosts,” comedy is made from the collision of the living and the undead as Max meets the family, and also as in “Ghosts,” an accident at the end of the pilot will change everything.
The delightful “Cupertino,” also premiering Thursday, comes from Robert and Michelle King, whose other current CBS show is “Elsbeth.” Like “The Good Wife,” the series from which “Elsbeth” sprang, “Cupertino” is a legal dramedy that grapples with — or at least exploits — current events and issues. The setting being Silicon Valley, these will largely concern computers and what people do with them, including prediction markets, catfishing, plagiarism, personality theft, unreliable algorithms and especially AI, in its many nefarious proliferating forms, including what amounts to science fiction. Though the Kings like to examine things from different sides, “Cupertino” is at its heart a joyful attack on tech bros and billionaires, which is all right with me.
Michael Price (Mike Colter) and Olivia Siffre (Rachel Keller) are let go from the company Michael co-founded on the same day — he, because his greedy partner framed him for leaking proprietary information, and she because she rejected the harassing advances of the same greedy partner. Both are lawyers — he’s got a reputation, she’s a year out of law school — and, having a TV series to get on with, they decide to team up, creating a David firm to take on the local Goliaths. His father (Joe Morton) is a very successful “celebrity lawyer”; her parents run a Christian publishing company in the Midwest. She hums “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” when she’s stressed.
“You’re the only one who wears suits here,” Olivia says as she sits with Michael in their first temporary office, a booth at the IHOP. (He does look good in them.) “Everybody else wears T-shirts and jeans.”
“Everybody else thinks they’re a genius,” says Michael. “I know I’m not.”
Swelling the two-person ranks of Price, Siffre and Associates is Michael’s energetic former assistant, Christy Palladino (Ella Stiller), fired for talking to him on the phone. She has a lot of relatives in the building trades and gets them access to an empty office, unfinished beyond its impressive lobby, where they‘re faking it ‘til they’re making it. Christy orchestrates the elaborate stagecraft that sells the illusion of a bustling organization. Busy Philipps plays Natalia Boutella, a rich divorcee Olivia approaches in the middle of a strip poker game to invest in the firm; for her money, she wants to be involved; it turns out her assets are not her only asset. The show is generally a lot of fun, but never more than when Philipps is onscreen.
Renée Elise Goldsberry plays Nichole E. Ferebee, an opposing counsel with a romantic past with Michael, which naturally portends a romantic present, or future. There is the usual amusing collection of judges, quirky and less quirky — a King signature. “Cupertino” is always interesting, often ingenuous, a little educational, sometimes a mite ridiculous — something for every mood and taste. With a projected 20-episode season, this is old-school network TV show is giving the people what they ought to want.
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