• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 4 hours ago

If you overlaid the blueprint for all the other “NCIS” shows on top of this new one, everything would align perfectly.

The new one is Number 8 in the “NCIS”* universe -- “NCIS: New York.” It joins CBS’s Tuesday night “NCIS” lineup tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern, hammocked between the mothership “NCIS” starting its 24th season at 8, and “NCIS: Origins,” starting its third season at 10.

At CBS, the watchwords for this franchise are familiarity and predictability. If it’s not broken, why fix it, right?

The new one matches up neatly with its predecessors. There’s the veteran from another NCIS outpost -- brawny, brainy Sam Hanna, played by LL Cool J for 14 seasons on “NCIS: Los Angeles until it ended in 2023.

In “NCIS: New York,” Hanna, a native of Queens just like LL Cool J, comes to New York to investigate the murder of a family friend, and he is so helpful to the NCIS unit that is already established there that he is invited to join them. 

In New York, Hanna partners with a brash, streetwise agent named Nick Schaeffer, played by Scott Caan.

Cliché alert: Nick tells Hanna that he comes from a Brooklyn family of police and firefighters. This is a theme CBS apparently loves. For proof, see “Blue Bloods” and “Boston Blue.” 

Agent Schaeffer’s love of New York, his loyalty to his family and his dedication to law enforcement stem from 9/11 -- the day his father and two uncles died. 

The rest of the New York “NCIS” consists of a young computer genius who can find anything in cyberspace at any time in the blink of any eye (a cliché on past CBS shows that are too numerous to count), a straight-arrow agent who drinks a large glass of milk with his dinner, and the fierce female agent who just happens to be gorgeous.

As in most, if not all, shows of this type -- not only on CBS, but elsewhere too -- the team is headquartered in a New York loft with exposed-brick walls and a view to die for.

In Episode One of “NCIS: New York,” the team does battle with a band of murderous Russians, today’s villainous group of choice for movies and TV shows.

Sometimes in network TV shows like this one, small touches inserted into scenes and soundtracks can be headscratchers.

One example in “NCIS: New York” is a song heard in the background as agents Hanna and Schaeffer are driving on a bridge. Its purpose may be to set the mood somehow.

But the song is “I’m Waiting For the Man,” a Velvet Underground song from 1967 that was about buying heroin in Harlem, according to Lou Reed, who wrote it.

The song and its subject matter have nothing to do with this episode of “NCIS: New York.”

Spoiler alert: The Russians are not drug dealers.

Having said all of the aforementioned, “NCIS: New York” will likely emerge as a network TV hit.  

Episode One had action and suspense to spare, and the ending was everything you might expect in a show like this.

Clichéd? Familiar? Predictable? In the world of network television as it exists today, these are strengths, not weaknesses.

*NCIS stands for Navy Criminal Investigative Service.