The MagazineCops at Sea‘NCIS’ gets no critical respect, but should.Sep 26, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 02
• By ELI LEHRER
 NCIS (the title is short for “Naval Criminal Investigative Service”) is almost certainly the most popular television show in the world.  It topped the 2010-11 Nielsen ratings for scripted programming and runs today—to universally high viewership—on at least three different networks. On one July Sunday, a Northern Virginia cable television system offered at least 11 hours of the show; a 2010 Harris poll found that it was America’s all-time favorite TV series. Even previously aired regular time (Tuesday, 8 p.m. ET/PT) NCIS episodes on home network CBS regularly outperform new episodes of critically praised shows like the Canadian cop drama Rookie Blue, vampire thriller True Blood, and the Steven Spielberg-produced Falling Skies. The show is also a global hit: It regularly ranks among the top dramas in countries ranging from France to Brazil and is translated or subtitled in at least 30 languages in no less than 60 markets. If you aren’t one of its millions of viewers, however, there’s a decent chance you may not have heard of NCIS, or its almost-as-popular spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles. It received mixed reviews on its debut in 2003, and while a few media outlets have run stories on its commercial success, not a single major television critic for a leading daily or newsmagazine has written about it since at least 2008. Even CBS’s own talk and news shows pay only token attention to its cast and their doings. Not even television people give it much respect: In eight seasons the perennial Top 20 show has gotten only two Emmy nominations (neither one for the show’s leading creative talents or regular cast). To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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