As ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ Comes To A End, An ‘Authentic’ Portrayal Of The City Goes With Movies / TV

Say what you want about the artistic merits of “NCIS: New Orleans,” at least its characters never had an okra party.

And now that he’s gone, the show is going to miss.

The big-budget, locally-shot CBS drama, a boon to film crews and local businesses that cater to the television and film industry, will end its seventh year with a series finale on May 16.

“NCIS: New Orleans” tells the sometimes overlapping professional and personal sagas of a team from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service led by Dwayne Pride, played by Scott Bakula.

He didn’t necessarily aspire to the same hyper-Big Easy cultural realism as “Treme,” David Simon and Eric Overmyer’s post-Katrina HBO prestige project.

But it also didn’t botch local credentials as badly as “K-Ville,” the short-lived 2007 drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans (hence the “K”). A much-mocked episode of “K-Ville” introduced baffled residents to the hitherto unknown concept of an “okra party”.

“One of the gifts that ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ gave the city was the number of shoots they shot on location and in concert halls, and the support they gave to cultural organizations. Said Carroll Morton, director of the New Orleans film office. “They were very focused on authenticity and communicating to the world the culture, the wealth and the beauty of the city.”

“NCIS: New Orleans” is filmed throughout the greater New Orleans area and on the soundstage of the NIMS Center in Harahan. Filming for the seventh and final season is slated to end in March.

Since its premiere in 2014, the show has been a cornerstone of the local film industry, employing around 200 crew members.

The show spent $ 92 million per season locally, based on numbers reported to the state’s film and television tax credit incentive program. This program reimburses up to 40% of local production costs, which means the show has received tax breaks in the tens of millions of dollars during its broadcast.

Morton said he has the biggest budget for any locally shot TV show.

“NCIS: New Orleans” paved the way in the city for television productions. It’s hard to lose a production like ‘NCIS’, but we are confident that from a financial point of view, based on the commitments we have for TV shows and feature films, we will replace that revenue ”, Morton added.

A total of 11 TV series and one movie are either being filmed or preparing to kick off in the next 30 days, she said.

The decline in ratings apparently sealed the fate of “NCIS: New Orleans”. Until the sixth season, it would have averaged 11 million viewers per week.

But the viewership for the first eight episodes of this season was only 4.8 million on average, TVLine.com reported, ranking it ninth among the 12 dramas on the CBS program.

Most of the hour-long “NCIS: New Orleans” episodes – the series will end with 155 – follow a similar dramatic arc. A crime or the discovery of a body is followed by a sober assessment of the scene by the special agent of Bakula Pride. Its eclectic investigators engage in high-tech computer research and share cracks and smiles. Veteran actress CCH Pounder, Dr. Loretta Wade, the cold-spoken coroner, often performs an autopsy.

Inevitably, the initial suspect turns out to be a red herring, and the real culprit – possibly a foreign assassin, possibly a murderous archaeologist – is apprehended in time.

“New Orleans is such a huge character on the show,” Pounder told Parade magazine in November. “The music, the lifestyle, it’s a more relaxed atmosphere, and they still have their man or their wife, eventually anyway. It really seems to work in showcasing a city so spectacularly different from any other city in America and unusual.

In a big twist in season six, Special Agent Christopher LaSalle, played by Alabama-born actor Lucas Black, was killed.

Black then attended the controversial Sean Feucht prayer rally, mostly without a mask, in the French Quarter on November 7, during which Lauren Daigle sang. The rally angered Mayor LaToya Cantrell and many residents.

“I never really planned on coming back here to the French Quarter – it’s not one of my favorite places,” Black said in an Instagram post he recounted from the perimeter of the crowd.

He might not have cared about the French Quarter, but other cast members seemed to be settling in just fine.

Pounder, an avid art collector, immersed herself in the city’s visual arts community. She joined the John T.

Late Wednesday night, Pounder tweeted an article about the cancellation of “NCIS: New Orleans”. Five hours later, indicating that she wasn’t cutting her cultural ties with the city anytime soon, she tweeted about an upcoming event at the New Orleans African American Museum, with the message: “Treme, old and Historic trying to renew and reinvent itself!

Bakula, an executive producer of the show as well as its star, told The Hollywood Reporter: “It’s sad to end our love affair with this phenomenal city, but so grateful for all the friends we’ve made. facts along the way. I will miss the music. Many thanks to CBS for seven years. “

Bakula’s character was a fan of music, so local musicians often appeared on screen. Notable cameos included a depiction of the revivalists at Tipitina.

Local keyboardist John “Papa” Gros led his band for a Mardi Gras-themed episode. He performed his original composition “Deep in the Mud”, which earned him license fees and royalties, as well as performance fees.

“I was paid well,” he said. “In my world, it was about as good as it gets.”

The original “NCIS”, itself derived from the military police show “JAG”, is now in its 18th season. He spawned “NCIS: Los Angeles”, then “NCIS: New Orleans”.

“New Orleans” executive producers Christopher Silber and Jan Nash are already working on a new spinoff, “NCIS: Hawaii.”

Meanwhile, viewers have at least one more option for local crime content.

“Nightwatch,” an A&E Network documentary series that accompanies night paramedics as they react to all manner of chaos, will launch its fourth season in New Orleans in March.