Which NCIS series is best? All seven ranked — from the one that lasted a single season to the one past 1,000 episodes
The NCIS franchise has produced seven series across 23 years and 53 seasons of television. Here's how they compare on critic scores, viewership, and staying power, and which one the reviewers actually rated highest.
Seven shows, 53 seasons, and enough episodes that watching them end to end would eat the better part of a month. CBS is not slowing down, which makes this a reasonable moment to ask which of them were any good.
The franchise passed 1,000 original episodes in April 2024 and now sits north of 1,120 across all series. An eighth, NCIS: New York, premieres October 6, 2026. Two notes on method before the list: Rotten Tomatoes publishes no series-level critic score for any NCIS show, so season-one Tomatometer figures are the only comparable critic numbers available, and all viewership figures below are per-season averages from the same source, not premiere-night ratings.
Seventh, sixth, and fifth: the ones that ran out of road
- 7. NCIS: New Orleans (2014–2021) — Seven seasons, 155 episodes, Scott Bakula as Dwayne "King" Pride. Season 1 averaged 17.42 million viewers; season 7 averaged 7.22 million, a collapse steep enough that CBS pulled the plug on February 18, 2021. Season 1 holds 62% with critics. It also had the roughest behind-the-scenes run in the franchise: creator Gary Glasberg died in September 2016, and showrunner Brad Kern was fired in October 2018 after harassment investigations. First NCIS series to end.
- 6. NCIS: Sydney (2023–present) — Three seasons, 38 episodes, and two genuine firsts: the first NCIS made outside the United States and the first Australian series to air in US prime time. Season 1 scored 73% with critics and 33% with audiences, the widest split anywhere in the franchise. Season 3 averaged 2.89 million, down 30% on season 2. Renewed for a fourth season as a midseason entry.
- 5. NCIS: Hawai'i (2021–2024) — Three seasons, 54 episodes, Vanessa Lachey as Jane Tennant, the franchise's first female lead. Season 1 sits at 60% with critics. Its season 3 average of 7.79 million was actually up on season 2's 7.53 million, and CBS cancelled it anyway on April 26, 2024, with Origins arriving that fall. A Change.org petition gathered 5,500 signatures and changed nothing.
Lachey found out at roughly the same time the fans did.
"Gutted, confused, blindsided. Grateful, confident, beloved fans!" — Vanessa Lachey, Instagram Stories, April 27, 2024
Fourth and third: the long-hauler and the expensive experiment
4. NCIS: Los Angeles (2009–2023) ran 14 seasons and 323 episodes, second only to the flagship, with Chris O'Donnell, LL Cool J, Daniela Ruah, and Linda Hunt. Season 1 scored 70% with critics. The 2009 premiere drew 18.73 million and season 4 peaked at a 17.31 million average; by season 14 that was 6.42 million. CBS announced the end on January 20, 2023, with the budget cited as the deciding factor.
3. NCIS: Tony & Ziva (2025 ) is the odd one. Ten episodes on Paramount+, shot in Budapest and Spain, reuniting Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo on screen for the first time in 12 years — and scoring 82% with both critics and audiences, the second-best reviews in the franchise. It logged 371 million viewing minutes in its premiere week, good for eighth on Nielsen's streaming chart, and then fell out of the top 10 and stayed out. Cancelled December 19, 2025.
"Tony & Ziva, unfortunately, for the cost, it did not make sense with the viewing." — Jane Wiseman, head of originals at Paramount+, to Deadline
Second: Origins, which the critics liked more than any of them
NCIS: Origins premiered October 14, 2024 and has run two seasons and 36 episodes, with Austin Stowell playing a 1991 Leroy Jethro Gibbs at the NIS office at Camp Pendleton. Mark Harmon narrates as the older Gibbs and executive produces alongside his son Sean. Its season 1 score of 88% is the highest critic number any NCIS show has recorded, and season 2 averaged 4.15 million viewers, up 7% year over year. Season 3 premieres October 6, 2026 with a reduced episode order and Harmon moving from voice-over to on-screen.
Harmon on the casting, to TV Insider: "I felt the room jump a little when Austin came in, before he said anything."
First: the one that made all the others possible
The flagship has 23 seasons and 507 episodes behind it, has been CBS's top broadcast drama for five consecutive complete seasons, and peaked at a 21.34 million average in season 10. Season 23 still averaged 10 million. It survived Mark Harmon's exit in season 19 — Gibbs stays in Alaska, hands the badge over, and doesn't come back — with Gary Cole taking the desk as Alden Parker. Season 23 then killed off Rocky Carroll's Leon Vance after 18 years, in the show's own 500th episode, "All Good Things."
Read more: Martin Scorsese spotlights the George Lucas brilliance that doesn’t get enough credit
Season 21's "A Thousand Yards," airing April 15, 2024 to 6.70 million viewers, was the franchise's 1,000th original episode. Its season 1 Tomatometer, for the record, is 61% — the weakest opening-season critic score of any show on this list.
What lands next
October 6, 2026 gives CBS an all-NCIS Tuesday: the flagship at 8, NCIS: New York at 9 with LL Cool J's Sam Hanna alongside Scott Caan and Jennifer Beals, Origins at 10. NCIS: Sydney returns midseason. And Michael Weatherly is back as Tony DiNozzo on the flagship for a season-long arc, his first extended return since 2016.
Asked by Deadline in April 2026 whether CBS had considered rescuing Tony & Ziva, network entertainment president Amy Reisenbach answered a slightly different question: "We really wanted to bring the Sam Hanna character back."
Earlier we wrote: Running out of time, George Lucas chose his museum over three more Star Wars films