Panel-to-Panel: Streaming Sitcoms & Broadcast Serials? In this climate?
On CBS and Paramount+ shows that would probably switch places if you let them
Panel-to-Panel is the ongoing set of reports from the twice-yearly Television Critics Association press tour, which sometimes isn’t relevant until shows debut months later. As such, while we’ve got a bunch of things to discuss (and I’ll be posting a discussion thread for paying subscribers tomorrow), here’s a delayed missive from July’s tour as one of the two shows in questions finally exists to talk about. To receive future newsletters and learn about the shows we’re covering week-to-week, subscribe below.
When journalists were invited to the Paramount lot at the end of this summer’s Television Critics Association Press Tour, the day’s schedule was bookended by two interesting case studies of CBS and Paramount’s relationship with television distribution.
The first event—after journalists gathered to watch the live announcement of the Emmy nominations—was a live table read featuring the cast of legacyquel Frasier, which debuted last fall on Paramount+ streaming service and began its second season in September (check out Episodic Medium’s own LaToya Ferguson’s review at The A.V. Club). The last stop, meanwhile, was at the set of the upcoming prequel series NCIS: Origins, which originated as a streaming extension of CBS’ hit franchise but was moved after development to the broadcast side, where it aired its two-episode premiere last night.
The two shows offer insight into how much has changed in television in the past year and a half. When Frasier was originally ordered as a streaming series in January 2023, companies like Paramount were at the tail end of an era where high-profile content’s primary goal was driving subscribers, despite the lack of any plan for making streaming platforms financially viable. As a result, a multi-camera sitcom with strong legacy ties to broadcasting was forced onto streaming not because it was the best fit for the story it was telling, but rather because that’s where business logic demanded it should exist. The result was a short 10-episode season with none of the opportunities longer sitcom seasons have to explore character relationships and develop a ritual connection to an audience.
But by the time NCIS: Origins was ordered to series in January 2024, the tides had turned. The prequel series following a young Gibbs was developed by NCIS veterans Gina Lucita Monreal and David J. North, based on an initial concept from former series star Mark Harmon and his son Sean (both executive producers on the project). Their intention had been to break free of the procedural mold and develop the project as a grittier streaming series, but once the greenlight came that was not perceived as in CBS and Paramount’s collective best interest. With NCIS: Hawaii underperforming and being canceled after only three seasons, the decision was made to shift the Harmons’ project to the main network (although the franchise’s Tony and Ziva spin-off is allegedly still debuting on streaming).
What became clear when visiting the sets of both series is that if you were to give both creative teams the opportunity to switch homes, they’d likely take it. This isn’t to say that the Frasier showrunners—Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli—are ungrateful to have a chance to explore the rhythms of a 10-episode sitcom season, or that the NCIS: Origins producers aren’t happy to have a large platform for telling their story. But there were ambitions that the latter team had for the project that will be more challenging now that they’re the latest NCIS spinoff instead of an entirely new thing (at least on the surface), just as there are story possibilities in a 22-episode season that Harris and Cristalli would appreciate being able to explore (and they admitted they’d gladly accept it if CBS offered).
In the case of Frasier, I asked Harris and Cristalli directly about whether they’re struggling to figure out how to tell story in 10-episode seasons, and the answer was “yes.” According to Cristalli, citing conversations he had with star Kelsey Grammer and director James Burrows, “Jimmy’s point of view is the sitcom should move at a glacial pace. There should not be this huge movement of character development, it’s like an evolution that just sort of happens over time and super organically.” Harris added that “part of the joy and the reason that people go back to these half-hour shows that are so enduring is they’re like family to the viewer. And they’ve spent hours and hours with them watching them, getting to know them…we are so appreciative of what we get to do but obviously, we would love to have more, so that we can get into that rhythm and really explore all the great characters that we’ve set up.”
They specifically cited the example in the episode we saw workshopped in the table read. I noted this when I asked my question afterwards, but it was incredibly gracious of them to allow us to be a part of the actual table read for an episode late in the second season, as opposed to simply reading an episode from earlier in the season that had been fine-tuned through the rehearsal and filming process. It was also distinct in that it featured guest star Patricia Heaton, who was cast as a love interest for Frasier, but isn’t going to appear in the entire season: the episode we saw actually opens with a montage of interactions between the two characters that took place off-screen since her first appearance in episode two earlier in the season (which, as a whole, takes place over roughly a year). It’s an effective cheat to create the sense of a slow burn flirtation turned into a proper romance, but as Harris notes, “if you’re doing 20, it’s like you can sort of sprinkle them here and there. And if you do the ten-episode model, it’s hard to get in. It’s hard to justify a Christmas episode or a Valentine’s Day episode, both of which we’re doing, but that feels like what this feels like, which is a broadcast sitcom.”
That attempt to channel the feeling of a broadcast sitcom without the same affordances is an interesting challenge. As Grammer noted following the producers’ reflections, a shift to broadcast would force them into 20-minute episodes, versus the luxury of streaming giving them additional time to play within any given episode. The ideal solution would be doing 20-episode seasons for a streaming service, but that wasn’t the business model when the series was ordered, and it’s certainly not the business model now. But from my perspective, at least, the glacial pace Burrows proposes is borderline untenable in 10-episode seasons: I won’t go fully into spoilers, but having watched the season one finale the night before, I was shocked by how little development there was on some of the lingering story developments so late into a second season. And while I admire a slow burn, it’s only a slow burn for the audience, since jumping around for holidays means that a lot of time has passed for the characters without meaningful progress. They’re bumping up against some fundamental incompatibilities within the project they’ve undertaken, and if Frasier—and Paramount+ as a whole—survives the Great Streaming Contraction it will continue facing these roadblocks in the future.
It was harder to ask much about how NCIS: Origins is approaching its own challenges, because it didn’t fully exist yet when we talked to the producers about it twice (during both a traditional panel and the set visit). When I got a microphone early in the panel, and someone asked my first question on how seriously the show intends to mine the original series’ “canon,” I pivoted to inquiring how the procedural structure of NCIS will be forced to change in a period setting where DNA wasn’t an option and fingerprint checks took weeks or months. I was happy with the answer—Monreal noted that “we're relying more on character turns,” and that “we'll be able to go home with our investigators and see how their personal lives are affecting their professional lives”—but realized as the panel went on that I should have done what CBS and the producers hadn’t: ask the actors other than Austin Stowell (Young Gibbs) onstage to explain who they are playing, given that the show was ordered straight to series and they had barely started production.
Monreal eventually went down the line with the whole cast, and it’s an interesting combination of new characters and Muppet Babies versions of recurring or one-off characters who appeared on NCIS as part of Gibbs’ past. But without a screener, there wasn’t a lot to go on here, which is why I was happy to have the chance to chat with executive producer Sean Harmon after the panel. I’ll be honest: my interest in talking to him was at least slightly motivated by a desire to better understand his relationship to the project. While he notably played young Gibbs in flashbacks on NCIS over the years, Harmon’s career in stunts and acting didn’t involve any significant producing experience, and it’s hard not to think about the “Nepo Baby” of it all when he’s onstage next to his very famous and powerful father. During the panel, the elder Harmon suggested that the “idea” of the show was Sean’s and that he approached North after a pitch from his son, but he didn’t end up receiving a creator credit, and I would argue it’s healthy for “son of a franchise star elevated to executive producer with little to no experience” to draw some skepticism.
In the end, though, the younger Harmon impressed me. As we talked about the move to broadcast from streaming, he mentioned CBS’ support of the project continuing to differentiate itself stylistically from the mothership, and that they were pushing back against the traditional procedural format as much as they could (and getting good response from the network). He also specifically highlighted the show’s production designer Rusty Smith for bringing the show’s world to life, showing a clear ownership of not just the basic idea for the show but also its day-to-day execution. And when we visited the set a few days later, Harmon was camped out in the show’s interrogation room with North, ably joining the co-showrunner in reflecting on the space’s design and the stories they intend to tell there.
In terms of production design, the most striking ‘90s detail from the interrogation room wasn’t the CRT monitors (which we see showing an appropriately blurry feed in the premiere), but rather the ashtrays located throughout the set, and I confirmed with North that this had been one of the unavoidable impacts of switching to broadcast—there’s less smoking than they originally intended, and the one character we do see smoking is conspicuously trying to quit (Caleb Foote’s over-eager agent Randy). But there’s still a real lived-in quality to the sets, which have been expanding as the show’s scripts sketch out what a more “character-driven” NCIS looks like while still airing as a broadcast companion to the original. That resulted in the addition of a rec room—complete with vintage arcade machines—that wasn’t in the original plans, and one expects the show’s recreation of Camp Pendleton will continue to evolve as the show finds its way.
Based on the premiere, there’s some definite departures from the formula given the two-episode mystery and the strong emphasis on some serialized elements, and so we’ll see if Harmon and his fellow producers are able to win those battles. Based on some Google reviews I sampled this afternoon, the fans are somewhat split, with pushback on the casting of Austin Stowell as too tall (probably not a reasonable critique) and some issues with the tone of the show. Will viewer feedback push the show in different directions moving forward? Would the show have been better off on streaming if it wanted to break down the formula in this way? Now that it’s gone from the theoretical show we discussed in the summer to an actual one, it will be interesting to see how fan response continues to evolve week-to-week and matter in a linear environment differently than on Paramount+.
From a critical—and scholarly—perspective, I’m glad that the streaming era is inspiring the tension we see in these two series. The industry is facing an existential crisis of business models, and writers and producers are all trying to thread the needle at a time when it’s unclear what needs sewn. Frasier is too old-fashioned in its sensibilities to transform the multi-camera format it adopted, and I’d be surprised if NCIS: Origins is allowed to deconstruct the procedural to the point that it ushers in a whole new way of understanding the format. But from talking with producers and seeing the spaces where the shows are coming to life, I’d argue they each represent a valuable breeding ground for whatever television storytelling will look like in the aftermath of this complicated moment, and I’ll be curious to see what continues to stream/air this fall.
Episodic Observations
I missed the last station of the NCIS: Origins set visit to rush to a taping of After Midnight, but shoutout to Caleb Foote who was stationed in sets that had nothing to do with his character but leapt at the opportunity to emcee a breakdown of the morgue/lab with the show’s propmaster. I did ask about Monreal identifying his character as the comic relief, and he talked about how the writers are leaning into him being more jacked than the character was written. What a problem to have (although given that he’s only credited as a guest star, maybe not a problem for too long…).
I already wrote a bit about our Matlock and Colin From Accounts visits from this day, but we did also drop in at Poppa’s House, where I asked perennial Pilot Season King Damon Wayans Jr. which of his busted pilots he most wished would have gone forward. He chose FX Singularity, which was written by Beef showrunner Lee Sung Jin and produced by Seth Rogen—he suggested it was budget that became the issue of getting it executed. I don’t have a lot else to say about that multi-camera series until we see how some creative changes are phased in after the show’s pilot (which is starting with some renovations on the titular house, which will look different in episode two).
I chatted with Canadian Jess Salgueiro a bit after the Frasier table read, and learned this was actually her first role she’s ever booked in L.A., and she was appreciating the routine it created. I also asked if she’d be back for season two of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and she knew as much as we did on that front, but noted that the shorter 10-episode runs made that more feasible in terms of taking on other projects.
I don’t know that I have a full newsletter about my After Midnight experience, but I do want to note that Chris Fleming went wildly off prompter in this roast segment, and I was pretty convinced they were going to edit it out—nope! A fun time, even if some technical difficulties meant the warm-up comedian was really forced to put in some work.
Months-late special thanks to the CBS publicity team who were running the event for putting us in cars after the shuttle bus that was supposed to take us back to our hotel was going to be nearly an hour late. These events take a huge amount of logistics, but they’re a tremendous opportunity to get more insight into how the sausage gets made, and ensuring we still had time to get back to our evening was much appreciated.
Perhaps a little too inside baseball but worth sharing nonetheless: I’ll never forget the NCIS: ORIGINS panel because about halfway through it was when the entire room (save for those on stage) learned of the Trump shooting and you could feel the air get sucked out of the room in real time.
Very interesting! I wonder why a show like Frasier cant get 20 episodes on streaming, when CBS continues to make similar shows with 20 episodes on its network.. Is it that revenue streams in broadcast are just more 'guaranteed' that its easier to commit to more episodes per year?