David James Elliott & Catherine Bell To Reprise Their ‘JAG’ Roles On ‘NCIS:LA’
The CBS “proceeduralverse” is roping in a couple of older characters, as David James Elliott & Catherine Bell announce they will reprise their roles from military legal drama ‘JAG’ for an arc on ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’.
‘JAG’ ran on the US network from 1995 to 2005, followed the “judge advocates” (i.e. uniformed lawyers) in the Department of the Navy’s Office of the Judge Advocate General, who in the line of duty can prosecute and defend criminal cases under the jurisdiction of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. David James Elliott starred as Navy Captain Harmon Rabb, Jr., whilst Catherine Bell played Lieutenant Colonel Sarah “Mac” MacKenzie.
In the ‘NCIS: LA’ arc, the team uncovers ISIS sympathizers who look to be planning an attack on US aircraft carriers. Rabb (Elliott) is now serving the XO Captain on the USS Intrepid and is helping Callen (Chris O’Donnell) and Sam (LL Cool J) deal with this new terror threat. Meanwhile, Mac (Bell) is roped in by Hetty (Linda Hunt) as a favour to help get access to an elusive Russian diplomat.
“Catherine’s “Mac” was a strong, smart woman who held her own, and then some, in a male-dominated world,” commented ‘NCIS: LA’ showrunner R. Scott Gemmill. “Her character paved the way for other strong female leads. Not only is it great to be working together again as friends, but to be able to write for Catherine and have her same character interact with our NCIS: Los Angeles characters now, that’s wonderfully surreal. It feels like everything has come full circle.” He goes on to add “I was really excited to get a chance to work with David again. I did the first 4 seasons of JAG with him so to be able to work together again in and of itself is great – but to do so with the same character… on our show…this many years later – that’s pretty damn amazing. Bringing Harmon Rabb to work with NCIS: Los Angeles makes for a formidable coalition, and both entities are going to need all the help they can get when confronted with the greatest challenge of their careers.”
CBS has been building their “proceeduralverse” across multiple shows for a number of years. The original ‘NCIS’ was itself a spin-off from ‘JAG’. That spawned various spin-offs of its own, some of which have then crossed over with the Lenkov/Guggenheim world of ‘Hawaii Five-O’, ‘MacGyver’ and ‘Magnum’.
‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ airs on Sky One in the UK. The four-episode arc will begin with the last two episodes of this season and conclude in the first two episodes of next season.
