User reviews

This episode is a great advertisement for the beautiful harbour city that is Sydney. It highlights all the iconic spots, the Opera House, the harbour and Bondi Beach. The story starts off with the typical frosty relationship between the two lead investigators, that are brought together by the death of a sailor from an American Submarine. I loved William McInnes in the doc role, he is an icon of Australian television. While some of the plot points are a little dubious I am hoping the story improves with the next episode and beyond but I do look forward to watching more, even if it's just for the scenery!

I guessed this spinoff was a clever way of getting around the twin writers/actors strikes halting American film & tv production, as even the American characters hail from a different (UK) union, but the pilot played nicely and was both topical (capitalizing on the US/Aussie partnership on nuclear-powered submarines) and dealing with some serious issues.

Of course it takes time to get into the characters and actors, as evidenced by some mixed early reactions, but I recall how I was won over immediately when "Castle" debuted yet it initially encountered resistance (thought to be too derivative in the relationship of the 2 leads) before settling in as a hit. I enjoyed the cultural clash built into the varied nationality regulars and liked the fresh faces on view. Aussie TV cop shows are quite well-done, for example the recent Lucy Lawless "My Life Is Murder" series, this has a quality to it that is appealing. And especially intriguing is offbeat lead Olivia Swann, whose character's willingness to bend the rules (or break them) is promising for future editions. Plus the scenic locations.

With the strikes ending, I look forward to seeing Rocky Carroll on here pretty soon (the pilot merely name dropped "Vance"), and probably some crossover episodes.

Unlike every other NCIS spinoff, "NCIS Sydney" has no connection to any other established NCIS team... it's just a rough Aussie drama with the "NCIS" tag added to it to pull an audience with trickery. The pacing and edits make me wonder if the writers or producers have even watched an episode of their namesake. Sure Vance got a mention, but without at least including a video call from Duckie to confirm a finding are they even really trying!

And of course we had to include a bunch of Australian idioms to make it truely Ausified. Surprised we didn't have a mob of kangaroos bouncing around the Sydney Opera House.

Then there's the blatant disregard for ANY kind of rules, be it chain of command (at any point) or the stealing of a helicopter from the deck of a US warship all accomplished with zero consequence.

I love every other iteration of NCIS, so I'm sad this one is less than moderately good. There's also the weird choice to show this episode then have a gap between it and the next.

You can Google right now exactly how that works. Who the hell do they think they're fooling? Everyone sucks here. Everyone. There's nothing compelling or interesting about anyone here to keep you watching. NCIS has and always will survive on the characters people come week after week to see. Most of these feel like the leftovers from LA and New Orleans tossed in here. I can't even recall a single name. There's sassy woman, sassier woman, just your average guy from Brooklyn, shy woman, scientist, and Australian male cop who doesn't work well with others. Rubbish. I hope this one doesn't also last 10+ seasons UNLESS they seriously overhaul the characters.

I've seen better acting from school drama kids. Nothing about the acting is believable. It's crazy these people got payed for this poor job. The best actor on the show was the doctor who's a side character so you never see him. The scenes with blue were too painful to watch I had to skip them from the secondhand embarrassment. Plots were boring and unoriginal also unbelievable with all the rules they broke. I know it's a tv show but it's not realistic in the slightest. The jokes weren't funny at all. Anyone could remake this and do a better job than what has been done. Do yourself a favour and skip this one.

I've been a NCIS fan from the very first original episode. I've watched all the other spin-offs and I had high hopes for Sydney.

I just finished watching the first episode, it was so incredibly disappointing. It was very hard to watch and I was relieved when it was finally over.

The storyline was lacking and downright cringeworthy. The characters were awful without any kind of chemistry to speak of at all. I get that this is for entertainment and is not realistic but come on, this was terrible.

I guess I'll just go back to watching reruns of older episodes because I won't be finishing this series.

The lead NCIS agent, played by Olivia Swann is ridiculous. She has no personality, no panache and is essentially despicable from the very beginning. I'm sorry I wasted time on this. The premise of a protesting a nuclear submarine in Sydney is ridiculous. The rest of the cast is nothing but a bunch of 30 somethings trying to be funny and not succeeding. Jethro would be throwing conniption fits if he was there. The writing is juvenile to go along with the cast. Absolutely no need to give it a second look. The pathologist was the best part and NCIS treated him with no respect. Borderline insulting in fact. But again it was impossible to get over how awful the lead actress is and move past it.

Spin-offs are going to happen. When you have a successful franchise, the next question is "how can we further monetise this?" I have to imagine that's what happened here and truthfully, I'm not upset or surprised by it's existence. What I have an issue with is it's execution.

The script feels very American. If I didn't know any better, I would assume this was written for one of it's American series and had dialogue changed to make Australian references. It doesn't feel like it was catered to it's audience and I personally feel, if you want to make a spin-off of a show internationally, you need to take your audience into account. This show doesn't feel like NCIS in Sydney. It feels like NCIS with some Australians present. Culturally, Australia and America are very different countries. What works story wise over there may not make as much sense over here. If you want your spin-off to be successful, you have to take your audience and it's culture into account, you can't just assume it will be the same as yours.

Of course, this is just the first episode of the show and it has room to grow and improve but it's disappointing to see a show completely disregard it's audience in this way.

I really wanted to like this new introduction to the NCIS series but from the get go I had problems with the fake American accents coming first from Oliva Swann (who is a Brit), and then later from the Lewis Fitzgerald (whom I know is as Aussie as it comes). I loved Olivia in CW's Legends of Tomorrow, but I just had problems with her role in this series.

I know that the series is filmed in Australia but I'm sure they could have found American actors willing to work there to play the NCIS agents. They could even have gone outside the box and had NCIS officers who were of U. S. nationality but lived in Australia hence allowing for their Aussie accent. That would allow Australian actors to play those roles.

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of Aussies who have perfected their American accents like Julian McMahon, Hugh Jackman and Chris Hemsworth. So faking an accent that is not from the country of your origin can be done. Unfortunately, simply speaking with a drawl and rolling your R's to sound American just doesn't work.

And the correct pronunciation of Bondi is Ban-dye not Bon-Dee.

NCIS: Sydney final comes to free to air and I'm thinking it should have stayed behind the paywall. It had none of the professionalism of the other instalments in the NCIS franchise. This was cringeworthy, especially for the pilot episode. The storyline was flimsy at best and the writers tried to pack every sentence with as much Aussie jargon as possible. It was so dated I was surprised Crocodile Dundee didn't make a cameo appearance. And the way jurisdictional oversight was given up so easily, made the AFP look like second rate Keystone Cops and Australian politicians look like US lackeys. I wonder if Hawaiians find NCIS: Hawaii as insulting as this garbage.