Mark Harmon

Harmon usually looks as though he has come to work, even when the work involves telling everyone else what to do. His doctors and investigators are grounded, no-nonsense men, and he leaves room for their shortcomings. We value that steadiness in an ensemble. It does, however, depend on the writers giving him more to play than competence.

St. Elsewhere (1982), which he joined in 1983 as Dr Robert Caldwell, belongs to the more rewarding side of that work. Our affection for the programme rests on its flawed hospital staff and the actors who make them worth following, though the pace drags and the writing sometimes insists on a lesson we have already understood. Caldwell was his breakthrough, before the lighter leading role of Freddy Shoop in Summer School (1987). We would start with the hospital ensemble: it gives his sober manner some human failings to accommodate, without requiring us to admire everyone on the ward.

His later move towards mentor-like characters found a durable home in Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the lead special agent in NCIS (2003). He played Gibbs from 2003 to 2021, with Rocky Carroll among his co-stars. A procedural needs someone who can hold a team together across repeated cases, and Harmon’s businesslike manner fits the job. We would still want the fallible man to remain visible; certainty on its own is a thin basis for so much television.

Freakier Friday (2025) gives us the less useful version of that familiarity. Harmon returns as Ryan, whom he played in Freaky Friday (2003), and the film pauses to make sure we recognise him. We grew impatient with those pauses, his included, because each returning face stopped the story. Ganatra’s kindness to her supporting cast is a virtue, but she indulges these entrances beyond what they contribute. Give him something to do before asking us to be pleased he is there.