NCIS, a spinoff from CBS mega-hit JAG, follows the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a fictional branch of the government with special agent operatives working as counterintelligence officers for the US Navy. The show has been applauded for its character development and personality, partial comedy mixed in with dramatic story arcs, and the overall ensemble of characters that find themselves in unique and challenging situations.
NCIS has itself spawned two regional spinoffs, including NCIS: New Orleans, and NCIS: Los Angeles. Both originally aired as two episode specials during normal NCIS broadcasts only to find their popularity confirmed and turned into their own unique series.
NCIS has been one of the most CBS television shows to-date, with massive weekly viewership. Fans of other similar shows such as the CSIs, Bones, and Criminal Minds will all likely find themselves enjoying NCIS. Critically, NCIS has fared slightly worse, as many critiques of the show focus on it’s surface-level intelligence or ridiculous premise. More positive commentary talks about the pure entertainment value of the show, and that no matter your level of fandom, each episode has a way of drawing you in for the entire broadcast, even if you want to pretend to hate it.
While the show follows a general story over all of the seasons, most episodes are their own beginning, middle and end, with an intense opening requiring the attention of the NCIS to solve some mysterious crime.
Watch NCIS Online
CBS Online: One of the only places you can currently stream NCIS episodes for free, Paramount Plus, gives viewers five free episodes of the series before requiring payment to watch up to 20 NCIS episodes. CBS has been pushing it’s standalone app for a while, so keep an eye out on this one developing further.
Hulu: Ok, don’t be fooled, NCIS is not on Hulu, despite it being listed on the Hulu page. They simply link to the CBS Online streaming page. No word as to whether or not Hulu has NCIS in its future plans. Hulu is owned, in part, by Fox, NBC and ABC, with CBS being the lone holdout.
Amazon Prime: Currently, you can buy episodes of NCIS on Amazon
, but NCIS is not on Amazon Instant Video’s free library for Prime subscribers. This one likely won’t change anytime soon as Amazon doesn’t currently have much of CBS’s content available in their library.
iTunes: You can currently buy individual episodes of NCIS on iTunes for $2-3 a piece depending on video quality. iTunes very rarely makes deals to stream television shows for free, so don’t expect NCIS to be free on iTunes anytime soon.
Google Play: Same as with Amazon Prime and iTunes, NCIS is available on Google Play to stream for $2 an episode. This would be an interesting one, if Google worked out a deal with CBS to stream their content for free, as Play could use a big partnership to really drive the growth of their Play streaming service. Purely speculation though.
Vudu: Walmart’s Vudu currently streams episodes for $1.99 a piece. Vudu also has some fun features of the show you can watch as well.
Well is NCIS on Netflix? Unfortunately, no. Netflix and CBS don’t particularly play well together, as users have seen dwindling CBS offerings on Netflix as of late, as slowly but surely, contracts expire and remain un-renewed by either party. With CBS expanding their own content offering, we’d be surprised to see Netflix have NCIS anytime soon.
For those who still want to own a more tangible version of NCIS, you can still buy the DVD collections on Amazon. Which include a lot of behind the scenes footage and interviews with the cast and crew, likely a lot of fun for the biggest NCIS fan.
Watch the NCIS trailer below:
