At CBS, Everything Old Is New Again, Including ‘NCIS’

CBS is reconvening this week, premiering a dozen of its dramas and comedies, including 10 of last season’s 15 most-watched scripted shows. You might dismiss the network’s dominance of the broadcast ratings as a case of being the top dog on a small playground, but the seven million to 10 million viewers each of those shows drew — before any streaming numbers were added — probably don’t care much about your opinion.

Along with the returning CBS hits this week come two new shows, “NCIS: Origins” and “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” and one that still feels new, “Elsbeth,” which premiered in February and is starting its second season.

These additions to the schedule are nominally very different from one another, contributing to the diverse menu a big-box television outlet needs to offer: a sentimental buds-and-blood crime procedural set on a California military base (“NCIS: Origins”); a wacky-Texas-family sitcom (“Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage”); and an archly comic case-of-the-week detective series set in New York (“Elsbeth”).

But their differences are less notable than the thing they have in common: Each has emerged from the CBS ecosystem, spun off from one of the network’s existing franchises. “Origins” is the sixth “NCIS” show; “Georgie” follows “The Big Bang Theory” and “Young Sheldon”; and “Elsbeth” stars a character who was introduced in “The Good Wife” and later appeared in “The Good Fight.”

There are a couple of ways to look at that. You can see timidity and lack of imagination, and an overreliance on proven quantities like the sitcom mogul Chuck Lorre (“Georgie”) and the smart-drama mavens Michelle and Robert King (“Elsbeth”). But you can also see shrewd strategy at a time when seemingly unlimited choice and the associated fracturing of the audience make viewers’ desires for familiarity and comfort stronger than ever. All of the major streamers could take lessons in brand management from CBS.

The network does not have a “universe” in the sense of Marvel’s crisscrossing superhero stories or the byzantine timelines of the “Star Wars” franchise. But it has a sensibility that is actually more consistent, across a variety of genres and creators. There may not be a CBS universe, but there is a CBS world, a zone with a common language and values. Traveling from “Blue Bloods” to “Fire Country” to “Tracker,” you won’t have any problems at the border.