#’NCIS’ & ‘NCIS: LA’ Set Dates to Return to Filming for New Seasons

CBS; Sonja Flemming/CBS

Fans may be seeing new episodes of some CBS series this fall after all.

NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles are tentatively slated to begin filming again — after production shut down in Los Angeles in March due to the coronavirus pandemic — on September 9 and September 3, respectively, Deadline reports. That would, of course, be while adhering to COVID-19 protocols and as long as it remains safe for the casts and crews.

CBS has set its “fall” schedule to remain pretty much the same as previous years (while other networks like Fox and The CW have filled theirs with acquired shows). The Amazing Race‘s season is already completed, while S.W.A.T. began filming Season 4 on August 4. Bull (in New York) and Magnum P.I. (in Hawaii) can also begin filming soon, but dates have not been set. As for the rest of the lineup, the plan appears to be to get a few going at a time, including FBI and its spinoff, FBI: Most Wanted, possibly in late September or early October.

Both NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles ended their previous seasons early. For NCIS, the episodes they couldn’t shoot will roll over into Season 18, including Episode 400 as planned, delving into how Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard’s (David McCallum) met.

And over on the spinoff, “we unfortunately didn’t get a chance to shoot our last episode, so we pulled [‘Code of Conduct’] up because it was so dramatic and did have a little bit of a cliffhanger in the sense that the trial of Argento and his mano a mano morality battle with Sam, we will pick that up next year,” executive producer Frank Military told TV Insider. (LL Cool J’s character, a Navy SEAL, refuses to let Chief Argento get away with murdering a sedated prisoner and civilians just because he has connections in D.C.) “It won’t be the first episode.”

NCIS, Season 18, Fall 2020, CBS

NCIS: Los Angeles, Season 12, Fall 2020, CBS