How ‘Law & Order’ rewrote the rules

In hindsight, it all makes perfect sense, that a drama about cops and lawyers with an easily changeable cast -- so self-contained that any episode could be watched whenever -- would be the perfect formula to feed the ever-hungry TV beast.

From its beginning, it anticipated the contemporary audience’s short attention spans, and by design rendered most fact-based TV movies obsolete.

Yet if “Law & Order” has become a model format for the modern TV drama, its roots are humbler. Even series creator Dick Wolf couldn’t have anticipated that a program launched when dramas were in decline would survive through a second golden age for the genre, with the possibility of carrying that banner well into the 21st century.

Never TV’s top-rated show, nor its most decorated -- it’s only once been awarded the Emmy for dramatic series -- “Law & Order” has nonetheless managed to be a show that fans of pulpy crime stories could appreciate, and that devotees of literate, smartly acted drama could embrace.

Thanks to its pervasiveness on cable, to say nothing of NBC’s reliance on its reruns to plug holes in the schedule, it seems the criminal justice series is on all the time and has been on forever. Turns out it hasn’t been quite that long.

Underscoring its singularity in contemporary television, the series that premiered in 1990 reaches its 300th episode this week, a longevity feat unheard of since “Dallas” and “Knots Landing” went off the air in 1991 and ‘93, respectively.

Unlike those shows, or more highly regarded successes such as “L.A. Law” or “The X-Files,” “Law & Order” shows little sign of slowing down, and it has even turned itself into a franchise -- spinning off two successful companions without diminishing what NBC likes to call “the mother ship.”

Unlike most shows, the cops-and-lawyers drama actually started delivering its biggest audiences after more than a decade on the air, finishing in the top 10 the last three seasons -- something it had never done previously.

And “Law & Order” continues to be a rival-slayer, with CBS and ABC repeatedly throwing fresh dramas up against it, only to fail. This season it was “Presidio Med” and “MDs,” neither of which lasted long.

Its durability doesn’t end there. “Law & Order” reruns on TNT occasionally draw more viewers than such original series as FX’s “The Shield” and USA’s “Monk.” Adding those telecasts to NBC originals and encore showings of “Criminal Intent” and “Special Victims Unit” on the USA network, and you can see something with “Law & Order” in the title more than 25 times in an average week. Even a so-called “reality” version with actual district attorneys, “Crime & Punishment,” fared well enough last year to prompt its return this summer.

The signature series already has been renewed into 2005 -- assuring it a 15-year run surpassed only by “Gunsmoke,” which ran two decades, among hourlong prime-time dramas. “Dallas,” “Knots Landing” and “Bonanza” each survived 14 years.

Wolf, the ringmaster orchestrating this three-show circus, makes no bones about his desire to put “Gunsmoke’s” record out to pasture and run at least 21 years. Moreover, he says concepts for fourth and fifth editions of the “brand” already exist. (Insiders say a fourth hour has been held up as part of the negotiations with NBC over the long-term fate of the existing trio, a situation potentially complicated by the network’s decision last week to move “Special Victims Unit” to Tuesday nights this fall.)

James Arness may have looked a bit haggard by the time “Gunsmoke” rode into the sunset, but no such limitations impede “Law & Order.” Although the show calls on many of New York’s top actors, it’s never been beholden to just one. Instead, like workplaces all over the country, old faces disappear and new ones show up, and the enterprise just keeps chugging along. Indeed, on this show, the workplace is everything.

“There’s no way to really collapse the franchise unless there’s a complete fall of the criminal justice system,” says Walon Green, veteran writer of the film “The Wild Bunch” (1969), who worked on the program early in its run and has more recently overseen another one of Wolf’s shows: his ABC revival of “Dragnet,” to be renamed “L.A. Dragnet” in the fall.

In hindsight -- and hindsight is key here -- Wolf concocted the perfect TV concept, a series in which every episode is blissfully self-contained and the focus on story is so steadfast that actors can be shuttled in and out without breaking stride.

“That’s a credit to the writers, not the show,” Wolf says, flanked in his company’s office by some of those -- Green, Michael Chernuchin, Rene Balcer -- who have kept the machinery clicking. “It’s always the writing. There have been 17 actors in the cast, and they’re all really good actors, but they don’t make up the lines.”

REVIVING DRAMA

“Law & Order” made its debut in 1990, at a time when situation comedies (“Roseanne,” “The Cosby Show,” “Cheers”) dominated the prime-time standings. Television’s top-rated drama that year was “Murder, She Wrote,” clocking in at No. 13. Critical attention was focused on character-driven programs such as “thirtysomething” and “Twin Peaks,” neither of which was a ratings champion. Confidence in the viability of hourlong dramas was so fragile that the idea with this new show was to create a one-hour series that could be sold as two half-hours in syndication -- hence the cop-lawyer split.

But somehow, what Wolf stumbled upon was a show tailor-made to the modern TV viewer. At a time when research shows that people miss episodes of even their favorite series because of hectic lives, the program allows them to watch whenever, paying no price for missing a week. Its rhythms and tight format have been so well established that viewers can join in while the show is in progress without too much confusion.

Among other things, “Law & Order” also helped undermine the TV movie business with its reliance on “ripped from the headlines” stories. Movie producers were hard-pressed to compete with a series that could turn around episodes considerably faster -- and often better -- in a concise one-hour package. Indeed, the series’ second episode was inspired by subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz.

Although Wolf admits that he didn’t foresee the show’s longevity, its potential impact on the TV movie of the week, or MOW, arose when he first pitched the series to the late Brandon Tartikoff, NBC’s programming chief at the time. “I told Brandon that in the first meeting,” Wolf recalls. “I said, ‘If this works, it’ll put MOWs out of business, because we will be on the air in half the time that you can make any movie about any subject.’ If you look back at the 300 episodes, 100 of them could have been MOWs.”

“Law & Order” is not alone in replacing cast members. Think of the doctors and nurses who’ve moved through “ER’s” emergency room, or the assortment of cops who’ve spent time in “NYPD Blue’s” precinct station.

But what is rare about “Law & Order’s” actor shuffle is the show’s dogged devotion to putting the story front and center. Actors rotate in and out, filling the same six regular parts established with the show’s first episode.

Those characters’ personalities and backgrounds, however, emerge only in the context of the case at hand.

Actor Jerry Orbach “always says, ‘Let me hold a body so I can emote and win an Emmy,’ and that doesn’t happen,” says Chernuchin, a former practicing attorney who left the series and later returned. (In the interim, he created “Bull,” a TNT drama set on Wall Street.) “You don’t die over three episodes like Jimmy Smits [when he left “NYPD Blue”] .... It just comes out in a different way.”

Clearly, sentimentality is not a big part of that formula, in keeping with Wolf’s tough, no-nonsense persona -- someone who flatly states that he lets actors leave because he doesn’t want anyone around who doesn’t want to be there. He tartly observes that the show delivers character development in “eye-droppers, not soup ladles.”

Balcer -- who has written 70 episodes and currently supervises “Criminal Intent” -- describes his litmus test for how much personal information to convey: “When your skin starts to cringe as you write it, that’s usually a good indication that you’ve gone too far.”

A DROP OF HUMANITY

All three “Law & Order” series are distinct, with “Criminal Intent” casting Vincent D’Onofrio as a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, and “SVU” zeroing in on investigations of sex crimes. (There was initially talk of calling it “Sex Crimes Unit,” but advertisers balked.)

Aside from the cast, the original has stayed remarkably consistent. When Don Ohlmeyer became NBC’s West Coast chief in 1993, he told Wolf the series was so meticulously crafted that it reminded him of watching renowned surgeon Christiaan Barnard perform an open-heart procedure. Maybe it was too clinical, though. All the show needed, Ohlmeyer told him, was to make the viewer feel “like my kid’s on the operating table.”

Wolf embraced the idea that there be “somebody affected by this crime on a personal level,” calling Ohlmeyer’s suggestion “a great network note, which is rare.... It was additive. What he gave us was an eye-dropper full of humanity, and over the years it has warmed up 10%, 12%.”

Another network-driven shift involved introducing female characters to what was initially an all-male cast. Although viewed as somewhat cynical at the time, Wolf defends the call. “Women control the drama-audience skew, and they like seeing empowered women that they can respect. That’s just a reality. It was too testosterone driven.”

Balcer also says that adding female prosecutors better reflected what’s happening in courtrooms, although some would question how many district attorneys resemble former Bond girl Carey Lowell and onetime models Jill Hennessy and Angie Harmon, who gave way to the current occupant of that second chair, Elisabeth Rohm.

The producers stress that the actresses who’ve played the assistant district attorney invariably chose to leave. “It’s a thankless job,” Chernuchin says. “They’re the fourth fiddle.”

To the extent that “Law & Order” has a heart, it emerges in bits and pieces. Snippets of characters’ lives are revealed, from the past drinking problem of Jerry Orbach’s cop to the ailing wife of a former partner (Benjamin Bratt) to Steven Hill’s onetime district attorney, his lip quivering, watching as his dying spouse was quietly taken off life-support.

When it’s time to say goodbye to a character, the series seldom dwells on it. George Dzundza’s character, one of the original cops, died in the line of duty. Chris Noth’s hot-tempered detective (before the actor become “Sex and the City’s” Mr. Big) punched out a congressman, leading to an off-screen demotion. The prosecutor played by Hennessy, now starring in NBC’s “Crossing Jordan,” died in a car accident. As assistant district attorneys, Richard Brooks and Lowell left but returned in guest appearances. (Noth reprised his role in a 1998 NBC movie, “Exiled.”)

In one of the more bizarre changes, Michael Moriarty, who played the original assistant D.A., departed after the fourth season, following a public spat in which he lambasted then-Atty. Gen. Janet Reno for saying there might be a legislative remedy to TV violence. The actor -- who later moved to Canada and ran for mayor of Vancouver -- quit via fax and insisted he was being punished for his activism.

For all its success, compared with such headline-grabbing programs as “ER,” “The West Wing” or “NYPD Blue,” at a certain level “Law & Order” almost flies under the radar. Other than Moriarty, performers exit with little fanfare. The series did win an Emmy for outstanding drama in 1997, but that’s the lone statuette from 11 consecutive best-series nominations. It shares the record for most consecutive best-series nominations with “MASH” and “Cheers.”

At this point, there are few working New York City actors who haven’t boarded the flagship, which has featured more than 8,000 speaking parts. Wolf, meanwhile, is fond of saying that the perfect “Law & Order” episode has yet to be written -- namely, one that tackles a controversial issue and finds all six characters holding a different viewpoint, “and they’re all right.”

As perplexing as that might sound, if Wolf has his way -- and the criminal justice system doesn’t collapse -- the writers of “Law & Order” should have at least until 2011 to figure it out.

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300 reasons to celebrate

How important is “Law & Order” to NBC? The show and its two spinoffs fill nearly a third of the network’s prime-time schedule in May.

To mark Wednesday’s milestone, NBC is repeating the “Law & Order” pilot episode (which was filmed in 1988, but first shown as the series’ sixth episode in 1990) at 8 p.m. Wednesday, followed by two new episodes, concluding with the 300th. Those episodes, which end the show’s 13th season, overlap two episodes airing on TNT. In addition, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” goes out with back-to-back episodes tonight. A repeat episode of “Special Victims Unit” airs Friday ... but sweeps are over by then.

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Same types, different faces

The faces may change, but a hallmark of “Law & Order” is that the characters vary very little. Since its debut, the mother ship has based its formula on a bedrock of six firmly established types.

Sardonic, seen-it-all homicide detective with a face like all New York and an accompanying deadpan wit, which he bounces off ...

*George Dzundza (1990-91)

Paul Sorvino (1991-92)

* Jerry Orbach (1992- )

... his partner, the younger, sexier man of action with a few rough edges; his idealism is bloodied but unbowed. They report to ...

Chris Noth (1990-95)

Benjamin Bratt (1995-99)

Jesse L. Martin (1999- )

... Cleareyed, fair-minded lieutenant, captain or detective sergeant who’s a bulwark of strength to the troops and invariably supplies the key investigative path they’ve overlooked.

Dann Florek (1990-93)

* S. Epatha Merkerson (1993- )

Elected Manhattan district attorney with one ear cocked to the details of the case, one to the media coverage and potential political fallout. Frequent quote: “Make the deal.”

* Steven Hill (1990-2000)

Dianne Wiest (2000-02)

Fred Thompson (2002- )

Brash, articulate, single-minded prosecutor. Knows every angle and is unafraid to cut corners on civil liberties, but strangely sexless, especially given ...

* Micheal Moriarty (1990-94)

Sam Waterston (1994- )

... Earnest ‘second chair’ and (after role originator Richard Brooks) miniskirted gofer to the brash, articulate, single-minded partner (at left).

Richard Brooks (1990-93)

* Carey Lowell (1996-98)

Jill Hennessy (1993-96)

Angie Harmon (1998-2001)

Elisabeth Rohm (2001- )

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A show written in four acts

Since its debut, “Law & Order” has had its familiar elements, from the “chung-chung” notes that start each scene, to the four easily identifiable acts that divide most episodes. They go something like this:

Act 1

The notes sound, the locating text appears at the bottom of the screen, and the murder is discovered. Before the first 15 minutes pass, the two homicide detectives -- currently Briscoe and Green -- are asking questions and taking down names. In this first segment, the search for suspects has begun, in earnest. Cut to commercial....

Act 2

Solving crimes is never easy, and the detectives generally run into some hurdle, some complication, some aggravation (this is a drama, after all). At least one visit with the boss -- it’s Lt. Van Buren at the moment -- helps clarify things, so by the half-hour, an arrest has been made. Before going to the next ad break, the “Law” segment has concluded.

Act 3

It’s in the hands of the lawyers now. Executive Assistant D.A. McCoy and Assistant D.A. Southerlyn are preparing for trial. But typically moral or ethical matters need to be resolved. D.A. Branch sometimes provides the impediment, sometimes the solution. Either way, by the time the minute hand passes 9, the case seems to be in jeopardy.

Act 4

Any lingering issues from the previous act are brought to resolution. Perhaps McCoy and the more impulsive Southerlyn are at odds, or there could be something Briscoe and Green did or learned in their investigation ... but by now it’s time for trial. By the time the hour’s over, a judgment has been rendered. “Order” is restored.