Focus : ‘Law & Order’ in New York City

Trailers line a graying block on West 107th Street between Broadway and Riverside Drive. A raw wind blows off the Hudson River, and bright television lights cast an unreal haze on the aging whitestone buildings.

Signs printed in clear block letters posted along the street proclaim the presence of NBC’s “Law & Order,” the only prime-time television series to be shot this coming season in New York.

Actor Chris Noth stands on the corner having his face touched up by a makeup artist before the run-through. Paul Sorvino approaches. A handful of the curious hang around for a while, but most passersby glance down the block and move on, careful to step over the heavy electric wires that blanket the street.

“The on-location New York setting--the New York flavor is stamped on virtually every scene--is one of the key elements that make ‘Law & Order’ such a decidedly different show,” said creator and executive producer Dick Wolf. “Just look at it.”

Indeed, the hourlong series, winner of the prestigious D.W. Griffith Award, is unlike any cops-and-robbers-courtroom drama on the air. “In fact,” Wolf said, “it’s a whole lot closer to ‘Naked City.’ ... That was one of my top favorite shows ever.”

He might have added that “Law & Order” also has elements of “Dragnet” and “The Defenders,” yet it has a distinctly contemporary texture.

At the end of this second season, “Law & Order” rated among the 24 top series. But it’s an acquired taste; the first few exposures may even be off-putting. “It was not easy convincing the network that we would find an audience,” Wolf said, speaking from his Los Angeles office.

For starters, there’s the rigid story formula: The first half of each show finds easygoing detective Phil Ceretta (Sorvino) and his hot-under-the-collar partner, Mike Logan (Noth), methodically tracking down crimes, 90% of them topical and ripped from headlines. Their level-headed boss, John Cragen (Dann Florek), is their adviser and mentor.

In the second half of the show, quietly determined Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) and his public relations-minded assistant, Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), pull together a case and prosecute. Their boss, the level-headed Adam Schiff (Steven Hill), is their adviser and mentor.

Usually, Stone and Robinette win.

Loosely modeled after documentaries--many scenes are deliberately shot in a manner to suggest hand-held cameras--the look of “Law & Order” is hard-edged, gritty, a world without shadows. The sights and sounds of the city are ubiquitous, or as co-producer Joseph Stern said, “They bleed through every window.” The film is shot in color, but you remember it in black and white.

And then there’s the lack of action, at least in any traditional television sense. It’s not simply the absence of car chases or shootouts, but also of establishing shots, such as cops shown getting in and out of cars or entering buildings. Subtitles indicate where the event is taking place.

Wolf called the show “concentratedly story-driven. Each script is approximately 60 pages, five or six pages longer than most hourlong TV scripts.”

Another curiosity: “There’s no exposition, and nothing is repeated,” Wolf said proudly. Legal philosophy, legal nuance and legal language--and there’s plenty of it--are never explained. The viewer is simply thrust into the complex and often opaque world of lawyerly subtleties, legal wranglings and bizarre (at least to the uninitiated) loopholes.

Most unusual, viewers know absolutely nothing about the characters’ personal lives. We see them at work. Nothing more. This is not the world of “L.A. Law.”

“Not showing personal lives on a TV drama goes against the network grain,” Wolf said. “NBC wanted it to be ‘warmer’--that’s a buzzword. All characters on TV have to be ‘likable.’ After all, they’re in your living room, and you have to get to know them. . .

“We wanted to tell a story differently. Our goal is to concentrate on story as opposed to character. You learn about the characters from their reaction to the situation.”

Wolf, 45, previously wrote for NBC’s ground-breaking “Hill Street Blues,” “Miami Vice” and “St. Elsewhere” and produced both NBC’s “Mann & Machine” and CBS’s “The Human Factor.”

“What we’re trying to do is give the program a voyeuristic look,” he explained. “And I suppose there’s an element in ‘Law & Order’ that appeals in the way ‘reality programming’ does.”

“Law & Order” is noteworthy, too, for its conservative sensibility, which is virtually nonexistent in other dramatic series. The stories are seen from the cops’ and prosecutors’ perspectives. There is no attempt to stir up sympathy for the defendant. And while the prosecutors may experience some conflict, especially if the accused is also a victim, they truly believe in the morality of their office.

“You may think the show is conservative,” Stern said, “but most of our letters of complaint come from the right: gun lobbyists who objected to an episode which advocated gun control, Catholics who felt we represented the Catholic clergy in an offensive light--that was in response to a story about a nun accused of sexually molesting youngsters.”

The liberal constituency hasn’t been entirely happy either, Stern pointed out from the series’ Pier 62 studio at 23rd Street on the Hudson River. There was a brouhaha from left and right over an episode on abortion. “Many of the pro-choice groups felt we were giving the anti-abortion side an unnecessary platform for their opinions,” he said. “Following that show, we lost a half-million dollars in advertising.”

Both Stern and Wolf were pleased to report that the advertisers are back. “They’ve finally learned that controversy delivers audiences,” Stern said.

The fact is that “Law & Order” is too expensive to risk alienating the network by antagonizing advertisers. Producing an hour episode in New York costs $1.5 million, $150,000 more than in Los Angeles.

Wolf, who believes New York actors represent the highest level of the craft in this country, hires 95% of the cast locally. “The New York actor has a look and idiomatic sound that makes for authenticity,” he said.

That, too, is a gamble, precisely because many of these actors are not conventionally pretty or even recognizable to a mass audience. On the other hand, the show is so admired by the actors that many major names--Eli Wallach, Jerry Orbach, Shirley Knight, Philip Bosco--are eager to appear as guest stars at the unusually low fee (by TV standards) of $3,000 an episode. “They’re certainly not doing this for love of money,” Wolf said.

Aware of the value of good demographics, the producers have cast leads reflecting an ethnic, racial and age spectrum: The waspy Stone, the Italian Ceretta, the elderly Jewish Schiff, and, most central, the young, black Robinette. “We definitely wanted to have a positive black image on the show,” Wolf said.

What’s coming next season? Wolf guaranteed some juicy topics, from a woman charging rape years after it’s happened, to a crack-addicted, pregnant burglar who is willing to undergo an abortion as part of a plea bargain, to a piece modeled after the 1990 shooting of militant Zionist rabbi Meir Kahane.

“My aim is to keep this show going for five years without ever having a cop fire a gun,” said Wolf. “That’s the reality of most police work.”

“Law and Order” airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.