HOLLYWOOD – The bougainvillea trailing up the staircase and climbing the walls is just the first indication that CBS' "NCIS: Los Angeles" is coming from a slightly different place than its popular parent, "NCIS."

There's plenty of fun technology tucked away in corners of the set, designed to look like an old Spanish mission converted for use by the show's Office of Special Projects, but from the chandeliers that hang in the roofed-over interior courtyard at its center to the wrought-iron enclosure housing a wardrobe, there's a low-tech feel.

When the show premieres Sept. 22, it will be picking up four months after the "NCIS" two-parter that introduced Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J as Special Agents G. Callen and Sam Hanna, executive producer Shane Brennan told reporters on the show's Paramount Studios set Friday.

It will be Callen's first day back after being shot on "NCIS," "and we see his scars," Brennan said, though it may take a bit longer for viewers to find out exactly what happened to him.

"In the best tradition of 'NCIS,' you'll just have to wait," he said.

"The ops center and the area that we were in during the spin-off . . . it was compromised after Callen was shot. So they have picked up, and they have moved," he said.

Why an old mission?

"Because the very nature of the work that these guys do," Brennan said. "They're undercover. They're pretending to be someone else. They're living a lie. And so it was always the idea that on the outside you have this old building. On the inside you have this high-tech operations center. So, it's a building that's living a lie. It's a building that's undercover."

Not that anyone's hiding from the mothership. Rocky Carroll's character, NCIS director Leon Vance, will be seen on both series, and "NCIS'" Pauley Perrette will appear in the second episode, Brennan said. "She's directly involved in helping us solve a case."

O'Donnell, it seems, is still surprised by the reach of "NCIS."

"Everywhere I've gone this summer, I'm overwhelmed," he said. "People that I don't even think watch TV are coming up to me. 'What's going to happen? I love her. I love him,' and blah, blah, blah. It's amazing."

Local actor makes 'Bones'

 

Philadelphia actor Michael Terry will be back on Fox's "Bones" next season, executive producer Hart Hanson said Friday in an interview on the show's Century City set.

The Germantown Friends School graduate last season appeared in five episodes of the series, playing Wendell Bray, one of a revolving crew of assistants - or as fellow Philadelphian David Boreanaz' character, Seeley Booth, calls them, "squints" - working in the lab run by Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel).

"We've already got him in two scripts," Hanson said. Last season, "he played hockey with David in an episode. It's very seldom that Booth and a squint can see eye to eye at all, so that worked for us."

"He's such a good guy," Hanson said of Terry.

But, then, Hanson seems to love all the "Bones" lab assistants. "The ones we have now are very, very good," he said, adding that he worries that "we'll lose them" to other projects, since none has a series deal with the show.

Critics honor 'Galactica'

 

Syfy's "Battlestar Galactica" was named program of the year at the 25th annual Television Critics Association Awards Saturday night in a ceremony hosted by E! late-night talker Chelsea Handler at Pasadena's Langham Huntington Hotel & Spa.

Actress Betty White received the group's lifetime achievement award.

AMC's "Mad Men" won for outstanding achievement in drama for the second year in a row, while CBS' "The Big Bang Theory" was honored for comedy.

"Big Bang" 's Jim Parsons was recognized for individual achievement in comedy, while Bryan Cranston, star of AMC's "Breaking Bad," received the individual award for drama.

The heritage award, which honors a show that "has had a lasting cultural or social impact," went to NBC's "ER." In presenting it to longtime cast member Noah Wyle, I cited the show's record of matter-of-fact diversity and the spotlight it cast on problems both close to home and as far away as the Congo and Darfur.

Other winners included: HBO's "True Blood," for outstanding new program; HBO's "Grey Gardens," movies, miniseries and specials; HBO's "The Alzheimer's Project," news and information; and Nickelodeon's "Yo Gabba Gabba!" children's programming.

More 'Cranford' to come

 

Judi Dench will return to PBS' "Masterpiece Classic" in a sequel to "Cranford," executive producer Rebecca Eaton announced yesterday.

Also in the pipeline: a four-hour adaptation of Jane Austen's "Emma," with Jonny Lee Miller ("Eli Stone"), who's also starring in a "Masterpiece Contemporary" presentation of "Endgame" Oct. 25. The film, screened earlier this year at Sundance, focuses on the secret negotiations in England aimed at averting civil war in South Africa that ultimately helped bring about an end to apartheid in South Africa and the release of Nelson Mandela.

David Tennant ("Doctor Who"), the new host of "Masterpiece Contemporary," will star in "Hamlet" in a television adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2008 production that will air sometime next year.

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