When ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ comes to an end, an ‘authentic’ portrait of the city accompanies it | Movies / TV

Say what you want about the artistic merits of “NCIS: New Orleans,” at least its characters never threw a gumbo party.

And now that it’s over, the show will be missed.

The CBS drama filmed locally and on a large budget, a gold mine for local film crews and companies serving the TV and film industry, will end its seven-year season with the series ending on May 16.

“NCIS: New Orleans” chronicles the professional and personal sagas, sometimes overlapping, of a Navy Criminal Investigation Service team led by Dwayne Pride, played by Scott Bakula.

It did not necessarily aspire to the same hyper-Big Easy cultural realism as “Treme”, the prestigious post-Katrina HBO project by David Simon and Eric Overmyer.

But neither did it spoil local references as much as “K-Ville”, the brief 2007 drama set in New Orleans after Katrina (hence the “K”). A highly ridiculed episode of “K-Ville” introduced the perplexed locals to the hitherto unknown concept of a “gumbo party”.

“One of the gifts ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ gave the city was how much they shot on location and in music venues, and the support they gave to cultural organizations,” said Carroll Morton, director of the New Orleans film office. “They were very focused on being authentic and communicating the city’s culture, wealth and beauty to the world.”

“NCIS: New Orleans” is filmed across the greater New Orleans area and in the sound studio at the NIMS Center in Harahan. Filming for the seventh and final season is scheduled to end in March.

Since its debut in 2014, the show has been the cornerstone of the local film industry, employing approximately 200 staff members.

The program spent $ 92 million per season locally, based on figures reported to the state’s film and TV tax incentive program. This program pays back up to 40% of local production costs, which means that the program obtained state tax incentives of tens of millions of dollars during its execution.

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

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

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

The drop in ratings apparently sealed the fate of “NCIS: New Orleans.” By the sixth season, he had an average of 11 million viewers weekly.

But the audience for the first eight episodes of this season averaged 4.8 million, reported TVLine.com, ranking it ninth out of 12 dramas on CBS programming.

Most of the hour-long episodes of “NCIS: New Orleans” – 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 Pride of the Special Agent of Bakula. Its eclectic investigators engage in some high-tech computer investigations and share smiles and clever jokes. The soft-spoken and cold coroner of veteran actress CCH Pounder, Dr. Loretta Wade, usually does autopsies.

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

“New Orleans is such an important character on the show,” Pounder told Parade magazine in November. “The music, the lifestyle, is a more relaxed atmosphere, and they still get their man or woman, eventually, anyway. It looks like it really works by highlighting a city that is so spectacularly different from all other cities in America, and unusual. “

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

Black subsequently participated in Sean Feucht’s controversial unmasked prayer rally in the French Quarter on November 7, in which Lauren Daigle sang. The demonstration aroused the ire of Mayor LaToya Cantrell and many residents.

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

He may not have cared about the French Quarter, but other cast members seemed to settle in well.

Pounder, an avid art collector, plunged into the city’s visual arts community. She joined the John T. Scott Guild at the Contemporary Arts Center, was named the 2016 performing arts honoree at the CAC SweetArts gala and spent hours combing local galleries in search of pieces to display in her 2,200 square foot rental condo. in the Warehouse District.

On Wednesday night, Pounder tweeted an article about the cancellation of “NCIS: New Orleans.” Five hours later, in an indication that she will not sever her cultural ties with the city anytime soon, she tweeted about a future event at the African American Museum in New Orleans, along with the message, “Tremble, old and historic trying to renew and reinvent yourself! “

Bakula, an executive producer on the show and also its star, told the Hollywood Reporter: “It is sad to end our love affair with this phenomenal city, but very grateful for all the friends we made along the way. I will miss the music. Many thanks to CBS for seven years. “

Bakula’s character was a music fan, so local musicians often appeared on the screen. Noteworthy cameos included a presentation by the Revivalists at Tipitina.

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

“I was well rewarded,” he said. “In my world, it was the best I could.”

The original “NCIS”, itself a spin-off of the military crime program “JAG”, is now in its 18th season. It spawned “NCIS: Los Angeles” and then “NCIS: New Orleans”.

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

Meanwhile, viewers have at least one other option of local crime content.

“Nightwatch,” a series of documentaries by the A&E Network that accompanies night shift paramedics as they respond to all kinds of chaos, will launch its fourth set season in New Orleans in March.