Review: CBS has a new parent company. But its usual solid fall lineup remains, with 3 new shows

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Set us as preferred Whatever will become of CBS in the monopolistic morass that never should have happened, I can’t say and, it’s too soon to tell.But for the moment it seems very much like itself, fielding a good old-fashioned fall season with premieres of three new series — a franchise procedural, a supernatural sitcom and a legal dramedy — all of which have ties to earlier CBS shows.The latest in the “NCIS” family of city-coded series, “NCIS: New York,” which premiered Tuesday, puts LL Cool J, formerly of “NCIS: Los Angeles” and “NCIS: Hawai’i” and something of a network ambassador, back in the saddle as senior special agent Sam Hanna.

The pilot (all that was available to see as of this writing) begins with a Bond-like prologue set in Dubai — slick suit, keen gadgets, giant melee with half a dozen villains superheroically dispatched.The operation causes him to miss a phone call from the son of an old friend who, by the time Sam calls back, will be dead in Central Park, an apparent suicide — which no one but the NYPD believes, cops typically being slow in such series.

Not so says Sam, who attaches himself — temporarily, he thinks — to the NCIS New York branch, headed by Jennifer Beals as assistant special agent-in-charge Robyn Wells.This time, and probably not for the last time, it’s personal.Wells gives him a partner, Scott Caan’s Nick Schaeffer, a talky little New Yorker, who says things like, “I’m no rocket surgeon,” and they set off through the city’s many neighborhoods, identified in screen-filling outline type — Bushwick, Soho, Diamond District, Red Hook, Gerritsen Beach.

Even the BQE gets a title.Filling out the team that makes every “NCIS” cast a family are special agent Addison “Addy” Ross (Jacqueline Byers), ponytailed, humorous; special agent Wyatt Sellers...