Something will happen to CBS in the monopoly swamp that should never have happened, I can’t say that, and it’s too early to tell. But for now, it’s looking very much like itself, continuing a good old-fashioned fall season with the premieres of three new series (a franchise procedural, a supernatural sitcom, and a legal drama), all of which have ties to previous CBS shows.
The latest member of the “NCIS” family of city-coded series, “NCIS: New York,” The film, which premiered Tuesday, returns LL Cool J, a network ambassador of sorts who previously starred in “NCIS: Los Angeles” and “NCIS: Hawai’i,” as veteran special agent Sam Hanna. The pilot (all that has been seen up to the moment of this writing) begins with a Bond-like prologue set in Dubai: smart suits, sharp gadgets, giant melee with a superheroic dispatch of half a dozen bad guys. The operation causes him to miss a phone call from an old friend’s son; this person will be dead in Central Park by the time Sam calls back, an apparent suicide – no one believes it except the NYPD, cops are usually slow to act in these types of series. Not so, says Sam, who temporarily connects himself with the New York branch of NCIS and Robyn Wells, Jennifer Beals’ assistant special agent in charge. This time and probably won’t be the last time, it’s personal.
Wells gives him a partner; Scott Caan’s Nick Schaeffer is a loud-mouthed little New Yorker who says things like “I’m not a rocket surgeon,” and they head into the city’s many neighborhoods defined by the type of sketch that fills the screen—Bushwick, Soho, the Diamond District, Red Hook, Gerritsen Beach. Even BQE gets a title. Other members of the team that makes every “NCIS” cast member a family include ponytailed, wisecracking special agent Addison “Addy” Ross (Jacqueline Byers); special agent Wyatt Sellers (Shane Harper), recently arrived from Alaska, milk-guzzling, abandoned by his fiancée; and Sean Sullivan (Devin Druid), the requisite “weird” (as they call it) tech wizard who appears as a less twisted version of Roddy Ho in “Slow Horses.”
Clue leads to clues in a very short time; it’s an episodic show that’s supposed to wrap around an investigation in 42 minutes. I assume anyone who loved “NCIS,” with its combination of Scooby Gang teamwork, emotion, action and witty banter, will feel happy here (“Welcome to Brooklyn,” Nick says as bullets fly. “It hasn’t changed that much,” says local Sam). Looking out over Manhattan from under the Williamsburg Bridge, Nick convinces Sam that New York is where he should stay. Then they head out for a soul food breakfast.
“Eternally Yours,” starring Allegra Edwards as Liz and Ed Weeks, is from the developers of “Ghosts.”
(Jan Thijs/CBS)
In the spirit of the channel’s “Ghosts” and originally created by developers Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, comes another cute, clever supernatural domestic comedy. “Yours Forever.” That film, which premieres Thursday, is a kind 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 love it.) Charles (Ed Weeks), the head of the coven, and Liz (Allegra Edwards) have been married for 500 years and are tired of each other, especially Charles, who is a bitter pill. (“Life is hard,” he says, “and then you keep trying not to die.”)
Living with them is their adopted daughter, Emma (Helen J. Shen), who is quietly dating ordinary human Max (Jaren Lewison); Jesse, a cute muscle man; his aging human wife, Phyllis (Rose Abdoo), whose mind he erases when she overhears vampire business—he sees Jesse, whom he met in 1989 “when we were both 28,” as too well protected—and his twin half-vampire sons, Henry (Shylo Molina), who has all the good vampire abilities, and Mort (Tristan Michael Brown), who can talk to a dog. (The technical nature of some of these relationships is unclear.)
No one sleeps in a coffin and everyone seems to go out to work or school during the day. Liz teaches history at a local college; Charles, who disapproves of her work because she is too old-fashioned, is a financial planner; Jesse is a personal trainer who covers himself with spray tan so he can be seen in the gym mirrors; and Emma is a veterinarian. They do not feed on humans, although Charles prefers to do so because, according to Liz, “it’s not nice.” (Usually the use of animal blood.) As in “Ghosts,” the comedy consists of the living colliding with the undead as Max meets the family, and again, as in “Ghosts,” an accident at the end of the pilot will change everything.
“Cupertino” stars Rachel Keller as Olivia Siffre, Ella Stiller as Christy Palladino and Mike Colter as Michael Price.
(Elizabeth Fisher/CBS)
Pleasant “Cupertino” The series, which also premieres Thursday, comes from Robert and Michelle King, whose other current CBS show is “Elsbeth.” Like “The Good Wife,” the series from which “Elsbeth” was born, “Cupertino” is a legal drama that grapples with, or at least exploits, current events and issues. Since the setting is Silicon Valley, these will largely concern computers and what people do with them, including prediction markets, catfishing, plagiarism, persona theft, unreliable algorithms, and artificial intelligence in many malevolent proliferating forms, especially ones that also amount to science fiction. Although Kings likes to examine things from different angles, “Cupertino” is, at its heart, a gleeful attack on tech bros and billionaires, and that’s fine by me.
Michael Price (Mike Colter) and Olivia Siffre (Rachel Keller) are fired from the company Michael co-founded on the same day; Michael Price (Mike Colter) because his greedy partner accuses him of leaking private information, and Michael rejects the same greedy partner’s abusive advances. They’re both lawyers – he’s a celebrity, she’s a year away from graduating law school – and since they have a TV series to produce, they decide to team up, forming a David firm to take on the local Goliaths. His father (Joe Morton) is a very successful “celebrity lawyer”; his family runs a Christian publishing company in the Midwest. He hums “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” when he’s stressed.
“You’re the only one wearing a suit here,” Olivia says, sitting with Michael in their first temporary office, a booth at IHOP. (She looks really good in them.) “Everyone else is wearing T-shirts and jeans.”
“Everyone else thinks they’re a genius,” says Michael. “I know I’m not.”
Filling out Price, Siffre and Associates’ two-man roster is Christy Palladino (Ella Stiller), Michael’s energetic former assistant who is fired for talking to him on the phone. He has several relatives in the construction business, and he gives them access to an unfinished, empty office beyond its impressive lobby, where they fake it ’til they make it. Christy directs elaborate stagecraft that sells the illusion of bustling organization. Busy Philipps plays Natalia Boutella, a wealthy divorcee whom Olivia approaches in the middle of a game of strip poker to invest in the company; He wants to be involved for the money; It turns out that their assets are not his only assets. The show is overall very entertaining, but never more so than when Philipps is on screen.
Renée Elise Goldsberry plays Nichole E. Ferebee, an opposing lawyer who has a romantic history with Michael, which naturally foreshadows a romantic present or future. There’s the usual collection of entertaining judges, quirky and less quirky – a King signature. “Cupertino” is always interesting, often sincere, a little educational, sometimes ridiculous; There is something to suit every mood and taste. With an estimated 20-episode season, this old-school TV show gives people what they need to want.