Although Law & Order remained a staple of prime-time television, ratings began to plummet about 15 years in, and NBC canceled the mother ship in its 20th season after 456 episodes. Unlike SVU, the most successful franchise installment, the original show doesn’t have a Mariska Hargitay type guiding viewers through every season.
But this leaves little room for long-term development especially with frequently rotating casts. There’s a comforting familiarity in the rhythms of the series (despite all the murder). Over time, Law & Order’s greatest appeal - predictability - proved to be its biggest obstacle. The TV behemoth came to influence not only the various Law & Order spinoffs (including Special Victims Unit, Criminal Intent, Trial by Jury, LA, and Organized Crime) but police procedurals as a whole for years to come. While the split “Law” and “Order” format of the show - detective work in the first half, prosecutorial action in the second - was originally created in an effort to sell syndication rights for an hourlong show to traditionally 30-minute-block networks (per Wolf’s 2003 book, Law & Order: Crime Scenes), the formula quickly became an essential part of the franchise’s gimmick.
Created by Dick Wolf, the series offered an in-depth look at the New York City criminal-justice system with “ripped from the headlines” story lines. When Law & Order premiered on a quiet Thursday night in 1990, the show was fairly unassuming.
