Verified streaming availability
Editorial verification
Reviewed by the OnlineTVcast Editorial Team against official provider catalogs and authoritative release sources. Material availability changes are recorded by market.
What this status means
Availability is specific to the named country and check date. Prices, plans and catalogs can change.
OnlineTVcast may earn a commission from some provider links. This does not affect which services we list or their order.
OnlineTVcast may earn a commission from some provider links. This does not affect which services we list or their order.
Mark Harmon's involvement as narrator and executive producer was described by the show's creators as essential to the project moving forward — they felt that a Gibbs origin story without some form of direct participation from the actor who had defined the character for two decades would have felt like an impersonation rather than a continuation. His narration gives each episode a reflective, confessional quality, as if Gibbs himself is looking back on the years that made him, aware of what was coming and what each experience cost him.
Austin Stowell's preparation for playing the young Gibbs included extensive consultation with military veterans and former law enforcement officers about the specific psychological profile of a Marine Scout Sniper transitioning into investigative work — a career change that requires a fundamental shift in how threats are perceived and how violence is understood as a tool. Stowell also studied footage of Harmon across the full run of the original series to identify behavioral tics, speech patterns, and physical mannerisms that he could ground in his younger portrayal without making the performance feel like pure mimicry.
The decision to set the series in 1991 was not arbitrary — it places the story during the Gulf War, which defined an entire generation of military experience and created the specific conditions of institutional adjustment and cultural transition within which a character like Gibbs would have come of professional age. The period setting also allows the show to explore NCIS at a moment when the organization was genuinely defining itself, giving the procedural elements a foundational quality that adds meaning to the cases beyond their individual plots.
NCIS: Origins is a CBS prequel series set in 1991 that traces the earliest days of Leroy Jethro Gibbs and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service unit that would become one of television's most enduringly beloved procedural teams. Austin Stowell plays the young Gibbs — a former Marine Scout Sniper trying to rebuild his life after personal tragedy — who joins a newly assembled NCIS team at Camp Pendleton, California, under the command of Agent Mike Franks (Kyle Schmid), the mentor whose influence would shape Gibbs's entire career. The series functions both as a standalone crime drama and as an origin story that illuminates the formative experiences behind the character Mark Harmon spent twenty-one seasons portraying.
Mark Harmon himself serves as executive producer and provides the show's narration — an authorial presence that frames the series as an account of his own character's past, lending each episode a retrospective weight that distinguishes it from a conventional prequel. The 1991 setting is rendered with careful period detail, from the technology and cultural atmosphere of the Gulf War era to the specific institutional structures of a law enforcement agency that was, at that point, still establishing its protocols and identity. Each episode presents a standalone case while building a serialized portrait of how a team forms and how its members come to trust each other in high-stakes situations.
NCIS: Origins premiered in October 2024 as part of CBS's Monday night lineup and drew immediately strong ratings, as audiences who had grown up with the original NCIS found in the prequel a way to revisit a world they knew while experiencing it in new form. The show benefits from the specific pleasures of the prequel format when executed with craft: the audience knows where these characters are going, which transforms ordinary moments of connection or conflict into something more freighted with meaning. It represents CBS's most ambitious expansion of the NCIS franchise since its first spinoff and streams on Paramount+.
Got a "Not available in your region" message?
No worries. Learn about streaming access by region and explore available titles where the service is available.
Streaming availability and access rules vary by provider and region. Review each service’s terms before subscribing.
View service details and availabilityStreaming access guide →
.jpeg)
