NCIS’s Shane Brennan

This interview originally appeared in the MIPTV 2010 issue of World Screen.

 

Seven seasons in, NCIS has quietly become American television’s top-rated drama. In September, CBS launched the spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles, which is the highest-rated of all the new network series launched in the fall. At the helm of the two shows is Australian native Shane Brennan, who created NCIS: Los Angeles after working as a writer on the original series for a number of years. He talks to World Screen about managing television’s most successful new franchise.

 

WS: Why do you think NCIS has resonated with audiences in the U.S. and around the world?

BRENNAN: It goes back to the way the show was first conceived and cast. You need to have strong interesting characters, and then you need to find the actors who can breathe life into those characters, and it was a perfect storm for NCIS. You realize that you’ve got a hit when no one else can play those roles, when the actors totally own them, and that’s what happened with NCIS. It built very steadily, and the last two seasons it’s really taken off. People respond to good characters, and that’s really the key to the success of NCIS.

 

WS: What led to the creation of NCIS: Los Angeles?

BRENNAN: Given the success of NCIS, CBS were very keen to see if there was an appetite for a spin-off. While I was researching episodes and running the show, I discovered that there was an undercover unit of NCIS out of Washington and I felt that was different enough to NCIS for us to bring in a new set of characters and make a show that didn’t step on the toes of the mother ship.

 

WS: What are some of the major differences between the two shows, and what are the commonalities?

BRENNAN: This is quite rare in any sort of franchise on television—the main commonality is they all work for the same boss. They have the same general way of doing things procedurally, so the audience doesn’t have to relearn certain things. That commonality has been extremely good for us because it enables us to do things that other franchise shows can’t do.

 

We work hard at the differences. It’s about making the experience for the NCIS audience different enough; for them to feel that they can come and watch NCIS: Los Angeles and not feel like they’re watching a regurgitation of the other show. The very fact that the show is set in Los Angeles is one of the biggest [differences]. Los Angeles is itself very much a star. We film out on location as often as we can, we use those iconic backdrops that the rest of the world is very familiar with. The narrative drive of the show is a little stronger on NCIS: Los Angeles. We endeavor to tell stories at a quicker pace, we can use much more technology because of the undercover surveillance aspects of that particular unit—they get to play with more toys.

 

WS: What are the biggest differences between working in Hollywood and working in the TV business in Australia?

BRENNAN: I came over in 2003—having worked in Australia since 1981 as a television writer—and I was incredibly bored because I was writing two episodes of television a year. In Australia I had written anywhere between 15 and 20 hours of television a year. It’s a freelance system in Australia, and you write on a lot of different shows. What I brought [to the U.S.] was a lot of television credits.

 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing for an Australian audience, an English audience, an American audience, we all have the same emotional response to certain stories and characters. The big difference is how you execute that on the screen. Because of the very tight budgets in Australia, we had to handle things differently. We couldn’t have a lot of the exterior locations, we were tied to the studio a lot. Here, we go out and do the location work, see the action, see the audience become really involved in the fights and the car chases and all of that stuff.

 

WS: Does your Australian experience bring a different sensibility to the shows?

BRENNAN: There is one thing which I hope comes through. I grew up watching both the very best of British television and the very best American television (sometimes the worst of American television!), so I have a more international perspective than writers who grew up in this country. International audiences sometimes see reflected in some of the story lines a view that is a little more international, not quite as colloquial.