Waves slap gently against the shore along the southeast coast of Australia, the morning sun glittering on the horizon. This is the opening scene of a recent episode of “NCIS: Sydney,” the fifth series in the long-running crime procedural franchise, which premiered on CBS earlier this month. “There’s definitely a template that I’ve managed to extract from watching hundreds of hours of the show, a kind of typical ‘NCIS’ structure,” Morgan O’Neill, the creator and showrunner of “NCIS: Sydney,” said in a video interview. “That’s the overall architecture of the show, and it’s always going to be that.”“It still works,” O’Neill added. Through it all, one constant has been the popularity of procedural franchises like “NCIS” and “Law & Order,” which have thrived as purveyors of familiar predictability.

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Persons: It’s, ”, “ There’s, ” Morgan O’Neill, “, it’s, ” O’Neill, ain’t Organizations: Sydney, CBS, “ Locations: Australia