NBC television's series Law & Order

NBC television's series Law & Order is now well into its ninth season in an era when few shows make it through their first, especially hour-long dramatic shows. In addition to surviving, which shows it has been developing an audience of sufficient size to be renewed, Law & Order has garnered many awards, from the prestigious Emmy in various categories to other television and related awards. It has accomplished this under circumstances which might have destroyed a different sort of show, for virtually the entire cast has been replaced since the first season, with only one cast member continuing through the entire run (and he was not in the pilot and so is missing from that one episode). The show is certainly an ensemble show, which is what allows it to survive cast changes, though changes of this magnitude are rare in a continuing series.

The show is high quality, well-written and well-acted, yet its success has also been in part the result of a series of unforeseen circumstances. The producer of the show is Dick Wolf. He notes that what has become the longest-running dramatic hour-long show currently on television started with a different format and with no certainty of success. He further notes that it may be the only series ever sold to three networks before it got on the air. It was originally sold to the Fox Television Network, but Fox had no faith in it and backed away. The pilot was made for CBS, but CBS did not believe the show would work. Wolf took the pi

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ow would focus more on their personal lives at times "since that would give them more opportunities to emote" (Kennedy 33). Wolf, however, sees no reason to change what is working, though some shows have shifted focus somewhat when the story called for it. With Law & Order, though, such shifts often seem strained. At the end of the sixth season, a very good example of such a shift was produced when the cast observed an execution and then suffered in various ways through the day as a result, leading by the end of the episode to the death of one. The personal lives served as a means to bring change to the show, and this was highly effective. However, at the end of last season, a similar attempt was made that fell flat because in this case every member of the cast wa given a big problem with which to wrestle, the implication being one would fail, perhaps fall from grace, and leave the show. One did indeed leave the show, but the effort was so desultory that the other personal stories have not been addressed or wrapped up since--every character has thus been left hanging, and so have any viewers who might have become interested in those particular problems. This is a danger when a show only dips into the personal lives of chara

Category: Film -