The 2024 TV schedule saw Mark Harmon returning to the NCIS franchise via the Gibbs prequel series NCIS: Origins after he departed amid Season 19 of the Mothership series. Harmon joined the franchise as Leroy Jethro Gibbs very early on. He was even one of few to appear in the two-part backdoor pilot on JAG over 20 years ago. As one of the franchise's OGs, he's in the know on various BTS tidbits of its conception. With that, Harmon just shared what the original concept for the show was, and it’s quite different from the procedural that made it to air.
Considering NCIS has been airing for 22 seasons now and will continue on the 2025 TV schedule, the current recipe is working well. The flagship series mostly utilizes the case-of-the-week formula that countless shows have implemented. However, there are occasionally multi-episode arcs, personal storylines. On that note,, Harmon told The Hollywood Reporter that the Navy-set drama was initially set to follow a different format:
When I first joined the show, part of what they sold me on was that this was all going to be based on real cases. But pretty soon, it settles into murder-a-week because that’s television, right?
A lot of procedurals included episodes based on true stories, with Law & Order being famous for doing “ripped from the headlines” cases. And it’s more than likely that NCIS has also taken a page or two of out of the real Navy’s book of cases, but the fact that all episodes were going to be based on real situations is still surprising. This probably would have made the format and overall storytelling significantly different from the jump as well. Why the producers decided to shift to the usual murder/case-a-week format is unknown, but it's hard to argue with the results.
The chosen storytelling approach didn’t seem to stop Mark Harmon from remaining with the show for 19 years and later returning to the franchise to tell even more stories. Plus, he found a different avenue to push out those real stories and to show people what the Navy and NCIS really are all about. It was announced in 2023 that Harmon would release a book inspired by the long-running dram series, with former NCIS agent and the show’s technical advisor, Leon Carroll, Jr. Titled Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, it centers on the organization’s early days. As Harmon explained:
The idea to do this book in the first place was: If we can tell the real history of this agency, then I’m interested, and I’m interested if Leon Carroll — whom I met 20 years ago as a technical advisor on the show — is with me on this.
In short, there are a lot of tales that can be told through Mark Harmon's book and the TV show he headlined for so many years. Whether NCIS will depict more real-life cases is unknown, but fans can certainly look forward to that happening with these books, with the latest one, Ghosts of Panama, exploring the U.S. invasion of Panama in the late ‘80s and how the investigation of a murder helped change history.
All the while, the NCIS franchise is moving right along, with Season 22 of the parent series and Season 1 of NCIS: Origins continuing in the new year. Meanwhile, Season 2 of the Sydney is set to hit the small screen as well premiering, and there's also the new spinoff NCIS: Tony & Ziva that'll be available for Paramount+ subscription holders. This massive IP may have started in a very different place creatively but, as a fan, I'm loving where it is today.