Review of Law & Order by Cristian Olcina in 100% Cine

Law & Order is an extraordinary series, generating a franchise of series, worth watching in its entirety. Below the photo, the more formal written review; further down the radio review, more informal, complete in audio players only on Spotify or Soundcloud, or on YouTube with video.

"Law & Order" is a dramatic series with numerous episodes that follows a fairly typical but well-structured formula that characterizes the show. Each hour-long episode is actually like two half-hour episodes continued. Why do we make this distinction and not simply say it's a one-hour episode? Because the show is divided into two halves that are clearly distinguishable from each other.

In the first part, we watch a case where the police investigate a murder, and in the second part, once the suspect has been captured, the trial of the accused takes place until the resolution of the case. Unlike other series that tend to be either police or judicial dramas, this series has the peculiarity of being both types of series in the same episode. In the normal structure, we find six people: two are detective police officers who work on the street, one junior and the other senior, and the captain or lieutenant who is the one who commands them, decides certain matters, and guides the detectives. In the second half, the three protagonists are two assistant prosecutors, one executive ADA, who leads the trial and the other the assistant, and the district attorney who is the chief of all prosecutors, in this case, the District Attorney who works in Manhattan.

Richard Brooks and Michael Moriarti

This scheme is very effective and almost addictive, one could say, because it is very dynamic, but also synthetic, and makes each scene go straight to the point, capturing the viewer in the plot. To the point that, at one time, in season 20, it was tied with another series as the longest-running dramatic television series. After that season, when they had to break the record with season 21, something very strange happened: the series was canceled after receiving numerous awards and nominations for 20 years, including several Emmy Awards. After more than a decade of rest, it was curiously renewed for season 21, and at the time of this review, season 24 is being aired.

Sam Waterston

Obviously, like all series with many seasons, the characters change because actors change, but the scheme of three prosecutors and three police officers never changes. It is important to highlight the great casting the series has had. Many times an actor who has a beloved character leaves the show, but another arrives who may be even better, and more beloved. For example, the departure of the first prosecutor Ben Stone played by Michael Moriarti, was a significant blow to the series, but the new prosecutor Jack McCoy played by Sam Waterston is synonymous with "Law & Order", to the point that he has been the actor with the most appearances, with 405 episodes, which led him to stardom, beyond the fact that he was already an Oscar-nominated actor before the series. Another actor brought to stardom by the series was Jerry Orbach, another who was in more than 10 seasons. Other figures, on the other hand, already had a long career, sometimes also multi-awarded, such as Paul Sorvino, Oscar winner actress Dianne Wiest, or Dennis Farina, one of the great acquisitions of the series, who had starred in another unforgettable police series, "Crime Story". One of the most notable addition of the last seasons has been Tony Goldwyn, who played the villain in "Ghost" and has appeared in numerous movies and series, as well as being a voice actor, including the super hit "Tarzan" by Disney in 1999.

Jerry Orbach

Regarding the plot, part of its charm is seeing how certain situations are repeated in numerous episodes, to the point that in the United States there are what they call "drinking games", which means that one must take a drink of some alcoholic beverage every time a certain situation from a list occurs. So, one can end up drunk watching "Law & Order". For example, a very common situation is that the police arrive to interrogate someone, the suspect who is guilty of that homicide or is involved in some unrelated illegal activity gets scared and starts running, and the police must chase them until they catch them. The number of times they must chase a suspect must be exaggeratedly high compared to real-life statistics of such pursuits. Even so, this is part of the magic of the series, a tongue in cheek reference, and obviously, if we wanted to see something more realistic, we could watch a documentary. But there always must be a hook in fiction. Many times, situations are exaggerated, even though "Law & Order" is quite realistic compared to other police and judicial shows. Which does not mean that it does not have common places that are repeated in that type of series and movies, such as prosecutors standing in front of those testifying in the courtroom, instead of sitting at a desk with a microphone, as it is in real life.

District Attorney Title Card

The series, formally, has the peculiarity of being filmed with a handheld camera, which makes the camera move a bit, making it slightly unpolished and giving it a documentary look, as William Friedkin did in "The French Connection", and numerous films that copied the style. That documentary look provides realism, and this in turn drama and emotion. One can feel identified with the characters. Its structure of a 30-second initial intro, the opening where someone dies, and then one of the best series intros in history, which more than 30 years later still works, is also very remarkable.

The series is living history of cinema and television, and in all seasons, it has maintained a standard of quality where the narrative has been accurate and where numerous moral dilemmas, numerous cases, numerous reasons to kill another person have been presented to us, and we have been entertained for numerous hours. Since, with nearly 500 episodes, we sat down to watch a marathon on television that left us 8 hours to sleep and two hours to eat, and we were watching 14 hours a day of "Law & Order", not even a whole month would be enough to watch all the episodes. Those who like to make marathons, know that they do them in one or two days, or maybe in a week, but only in a handful of series will it take more than a month to watch everything.

Main cast of season 6

In this particular construction of the series in two parts, we have that the first part is a police detective drama and the second part, according to Dick Wolf, its own creator, is a moral dilemma. Since in the first part the investigation goes through various channels with the premise of finding the killer, and this is treated in a very direct way. The conflict is clear and does not put us in front of any complication regarding our values. But in the second part, although it is true that there are some chapters that are more direct, the general criterion is that in the second part it is a moral drama and the prosecutors are forced to make difficult decisions regarding the accused, the justice system, and the victims. For example, perhaps what is most convenient to end a case is to make a deal with the accused, but then you must deal with the murdered person's family and explain why they have not been given the full sentence. Or vice versa, there are cases where the victims prefer a deal, that the accused has a deal, but the prosecutors do not feel that justice is done. Many times, there are cases where good people commit atrocious acts against very evil people and one can feel that they deserved it, or different dynamics where we see that human rights go above the pursuit of a killer. Or that the pursuit of a killer is cut short by some other national security issue, or that there is an ongoing investigation with undercover people and that investigation cannot be cut short. Or that many times a deal is made with a criminal who has a minor crime, lowering the price of justice for the victim, to catch a major criminal, whom the former informs on. So, we have a tangle of issues that arise in the second part, where also some of the accused take the trial as a public space to spread their ideas, even though that may lead them to a conviction. It's as if they put their own ideas on trial. And there are also cases where prosecutors have doubts about whether the person, they are judging is really the killer. And although it is true, considering that the system has a counterbalance which is a defense and has a judge, if simply because the prosecution presents the case better than the defense, they may convict an innocent person, what do we do? So "Law & Order" in that sense is a series that makes us think.

Season 20 full cast

Another very important aspect of the series is that in a certain way it teaches us to think. It is probably the series that most encourages critical thinking, since in each case and especially in the judicial part there are always ways to see it, truth, two sides, and you can see how the truth or the closest thing we can get to it is reached through a game of thesis and antithesis with the prosecution and the defense, where some say all the bad things about the accused and others say all the good things. And there the viewer generates the synthesis in their head of what the truth may have been. In that sense, watching so many episodes of "Law & Order", and especially in the human formation of a person, as has been the case with this critic, the series can help to always keep in mind that there may be another perspective, or that there may be a defense of something that at first glance seems concrete and bad. Therefore, that training in watching the series also trains us to see that there may be two different sides to each of the things, dilemmas, or problems, or supposed truths that we encounter in life.

An extraordinary series worth watching in more than 500 episodes, and it cannot be denied that recommending 500 episodes is something really extraordinary.

Cristian Olcina

@profedecine

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Here is the audio review in spanish that was broadcast on FM Play on the day 12/04/2025, further down, in the YouTube player, exactly the same review but with video: