Finally, the truth comes out. Dick Wolf, creator and producer of Law & Order, says there's "a secret ingredient" in every episode that keeps his long-running series going strong. "It's visual nicotine," he says. "The more you watch, the more you HAVE to watch. You get hooked. But it's a very good addiction. It keeps people off the streets."
Wolf is just joking, of course, but there really IS an addictive quality to Law & Order. The acclaimed crime-and-punishment drama has been on the air for 13 seasons. Not a single member of the original cast remains today. But the look, the rhythm, the feel hasn't changed one iota. Tune in to any of 300 episodes and, with only a handful of exceptions, you know precisely what you're going to get: an hour of television that's half murder mystery, half legal and moral quagmire ¿ and 100 percent satisfying. It's formulaic yet, after all these years, somehow always fresh.
"Television is a vast wasteland most of the time because of one simple fact," Wolf says. "Most programmers and most producers underestimate the audience. The writers on Law & Order know that there are rules that are absolutely unbreakable, like the fact that information is never, ever repeated twice. If you give the audience a challenge and if the show is well-written, which in drama is the key to everything, and well-acted, you have a much higher chance of succeeding rather than by catering to a lower common denominator."
The show is such a phenomenal success that Wolf, a former Madison Avenue man, has "branded" the Law & Order name to include two additional hit shows (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent). His company even produced a courtroom documentary series, Crime & Punishment, that's filmed and edited like episodes of Law & Order, right down to the trademark "ka chung" sound that comes between scenes. Which makes it hard to believe in hindsight that Law & Order was rejected by two broadcast networks (Fox and CBS) before finding a home on NBC ¿ and that Wolf's initial pie-in-the-sky hope wasn't a run of five, seven or 10 years, but merely "that it would go past 10 shows."
But the "ripped-from-the-headlines" storylines and the emphasis on topical issues instead of clich¿op-show action sequences have served the series well. "The only time the cops on our show have fired their guns," Wolf notes, "was when Epatha Merkerson (who plays Lt. Anita Van Buren) was at the cash machine with her two boys in the car and she shot the kid who was robbing her. That's the only time. Because this show is not about car chases and people hopping over garbage cans and tackling criminals. That's not the reason that people are watching the show."
When Law & Order is truly at its best, Wolf says, "Somebody's ox is being gored. Somebody once said to me, 'You've got an awful lot of rich white guys killing people in your show.' And I said, 'That's because there's no rich white guys pressure group.' But the fact is, in 300 episodes, we have offended every race, color, creed, religion ¿ because the best shows are often the most controversial, where people's preconceptions are the most challenged. That's the continuing joy of the show. No issue is black or white. It's all about all the shades of gray that are part and parcel of life in America.... It's a wonderful bully pulpit, because it still has maintained this cutting edge on storytelling. I think the shows are stronger than they've ever been. We haven't jumped the shark yet, thank God." And how much life is left in this tried-and-true formula? Any clue how much longer Law & Order can thrive? "I have no idea," Wolf says. "But the way I look at it is, we've finished our first cycle of 13."
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by David Martindale
