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Law & Order, the New York police drama, cancelled by NBC after 20 years
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When it was first broadcast in 1990, New York’s annual murder rate peaked at 2,245. Last year the city recorded 466 — the lowest since records began half a century ago. Unfortunately for Law & Order, the hyper-realistic New York police drama based on plots “ripped from the headlines”, the viewing figures suffered a similar decline.
Even as the show became a global franchise, its core US audience fell from 19 million to about 7.3 million. Now the verdict is in: the original New York version has been cancelled after a record-equalling 20 seasons. It is to be replaced by one set on the West Coast called Law & Order: Los Angeles, quickly nicknamed Lola.
The decision was taken by NBC television despite the stated ambition of Dick Wolf, the producer, to break the record for a US TV series set by Gunsmoke, a cowboy drama that ran from 1955 to 1975.
The 456th and final episode of Law & Order will air in America on May 24, with a guest appearance by Lindsey Vonn, an Olympic gold-medal skier.
In New York the series became a mini-industry, employing thousands of aspiring Broadway actors. Jerry Orbach achieved fame as Detective Lennie Briscoe, and the series helped to launch Chris Noth, who went on to further fame in Sex and the City.
It featured guest stars ranging from Julia Roberts to Philip Seymour Hoffman. It even helped to fuel a 2008 presidential bid by Fred Thompson, a former Republican senator who became a household name playing Manhattan district attorney Arthur Branch.
“Over the last 20 years, Law & Order became a New York City institution,” Michael Bloomberg, the city’s Mayor, said. “It began filming in the city at a time when few series did, and it helped pave the way for the more than 150 television shows based here today.
“It also helped launch the careers of thousands of talented actors and featured many memorable performances, although my cameos are not among them.”
Ray Kelly, the New York Police Commissioner, paid a rare tribute yesterday. “Having spent most of my life in police work, I typically don’t bother with cop shows, if only because the mistakes and misrepresentations are too tedious to endure,” he wrote in the New York Post. “Law & Order was an exception. The show produced convincing detectives, prosecutors, criminals and oddball witnesses. Even the corpses were interesting.”
The show goes on
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Article issu de Times Online et
initialement publié le 17/05/10.
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