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Created by Dick Wolf, award-winning Law & Order is syndicated on other US networks and worldwide.
The show follows a small team of New York City detectives who investigate a serious crime (usually a murder). Generally, about halfway through the hour-long program the focus shifts from the investigation of the crime to the prosecution of the offender, which is always handed over to the same small team of lawyers from the Manhattan District Attorney's office.
The series has a number of distinctive stylistic touches. The show is shot on location in New York City, and is known for its extensive use of local colorLocal color is a type of writing that was popular in the late 19th century. This style relied heavily on using words, phrases, and slang that were native to the particular region the story took place in. A well-known local color author was Mark Twain with - NYC Mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Michael BloombergMichael Rubens "Mike" Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is a businessman and mayor of New York City. Bloomberg was born and raised in Medford, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He made his fortune selling financial-information terminals to Wall Street f have appeared on the show in recent seasons. The cold openA cold open in a television program is the technique of jumping directly into a story at the beginning or opening of the show, before the title sequence or opening credits are shown. The technique itself ancient; Horace gave it the Latin term In media res usually shows a slice of New York life unrelated to the main story until the characters in the scene suddenly discover (or witness, or become victims of) a crime. Many scenes are preceded with a card indicating the location and date of the events portrayed. Perhaps best known is the musical sting which accompanies scene changes.
The show's cast of policeFor the band, see The Police. For the Polish town, see Police, Poland. Police forces are government organisations ostensibly charged with the responsibility of maintaining law and order. The word comes from the French, and less directly from the Greek pol and lawyerA lawyer or attorney at law is a person licensed by the state to advise clients in legal matters and represent them in courts of law and other legal agencies. Most countries today require professional law advisors in their judicial systems. Lawyers have ms are portrayed as basically honest professionals, very rarely straying from the boundaries of accepted procedure and usually solving crimes by hard slog and attention to detail rather than hunches and personal whimsy. Their private lives are rarely mentioned, and usually only in passing or if they intrude on their work. Perhaps the scenes involving lawyers stray from reality a little more, with a far higher proportion of cases going to trial than in real life (although plea bargainA plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case where a prosecutor and a defendant arrange to end the case against the defendant. The defendant agrees to plead guilty or no contest (and often allocute) to the offense charged, or to a lesser offense, oring plays a far greater role than in other series), trial lawyers acting as pseudo-detectives, and an unusually high number of twists near the end of trials. In contrast to detective shows of the 1950s such as Perry Mason, the protagonists of the program do not always win their cases, and many programs have resolutions in which the case against the offender is won, but justice is still not fully served.
Most Law & Order episodes are self-contained, with only a few exceptions over the many years of production.
Many of the storylines on the show, particularly in later seasons, have been widely regarded as thinly-disguised fictionalizations of recent real criminal cases that have been reported in the news media. Some of these episodes are even promoted as being “ripped from the headlines.”
Law & Order is noted for its revolving cast: none of the original actors still appear in the series, and many have stayed for a few seasons before moving on. This continual replacing of actors has not appeared to harm the program's popularity. In fact, it has been speculated that this has contributed to the series' long run since the regular turnover of cast members has allowed cast salaries to be kept relatively low. Also, the regular appearance of new faces in the cast has continually changed the show's dynamic, allowing it to effectively reinvent itself repeatedly. The four long-serving exceptions are Steven Hill ( 1990– 2000) as District Attorney Adam Schiff, Jerry Orbach ( 1992– 2004) as Detective Lennie Briscoe, S. Epatha Merkerson ( 1993–present) as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren, and Sam Waterston ( 1994–present) as Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy.
The show's most recent cast changes were announced in 2004 when longtime performer Jerry Orbach left the series at the end of Season 14 to star in the spinoff, . It was also announced that Elisabeth Röhm would leave the series midway through the 2004-2005 season; in November 2004 it was announced that Annie Parisse would replace her.
It is anticipated that, barring a catastrophic drop in its Nielsen ratings, Law & Order will easily survive until its 20th season, thereby tying the record for longest-running American prime time drama currently held by Gunsmoke (1955-1975).