Crime Story
Law & Order's simple success formula has kept viewers tuned for nine seasons
by Simon Houpt

In Robert Altman's 1992 movie The Player, Peter Gallagher plays a hotshot movie studio executive who suggests eliminating writers from the creative process. After all, it's easy to come up with ideas for plots, he says. Just pick any article out of a newspaper: it's a movie! "Further Bond Losses Push Dow Down 7.15%," he proposes, reading from the business pages. "I see Connery as Bond," offers a sycophantic sidekick.

The moment might have been meant as satire, but one of the most successful shows on television has turned the idea of "ripped from the headlines" plots into a weekly triumph. Law & Order has enjoyed nine seasons of escalating success on the strength of real crime stories that are transformed into compelling, compact and morally complex dramas. Currently up for renewal for its tenth season, the series celebrates its 200th episode in May and shows no signs of slowing down. What's the secret?

"More narrative in 45 minutes than most people get from four or five feature films," says Sam Waterston, who is in his fifth season as assistant district attorney Jack McCoy. "The stories don't condescend to the audience, and you get a new perspective on stuff that's in the news. I think it helps people to think about current events."

"Someone said to me recently, 'It's like kabuki,'" says actor Jerry Orbach, referring to the highly ritualized form of Japanese theatre. In the middle of his seventh season as the languid detective Lennie Briscoe, Orbach has been prowling the Law & Order set longer than any other principal cast member except Steven Hill (DA Adam Schiff), so he should understand the show's appeal. "It has a very structured form. You know you're going to see a mystery solved in the first half and then the trial, and the resolution by the end of it. It's a nice neat package, and I think people get hooked on that."

Indeed they do. Law & Order is one of the few shows on TV—Seinfeld and Hill Street Blues also come to mind—to beat back early threats of cancellation and blossom into a hit. In addition to its Wednesday night slot on NBC and CTV, the show plays in reruns on A&E where, despite airing as many as an awesome four times a day, it has actually increased its audience since launching on the channel in the fall of 1994.

That kind of popularity breeds security in a show's staff, which might be one reason there's such a strong sense of jovial camaraderie on the east side Manhattan soundstage where the show is filmed. During a recent Friday afternoon shoot, half the principal cast was laughing like high school students on the last day of term. S. Epatha Merkerson and Angie Harmon, who play lieutenant Anita Van Buren and assistant DA Abbie Carmichael respectively, were enthusiastically singing Neil Sedaka tunes off-key for Waterston and the rest of the crew. Never mind that when their director said, "Action," the three slid neatly into a dour squeeze play on a murder suspect, in the show's familiar drab green interrogation room.

Never mind that week after week this trio, along with Orbach, Hill and Benjamin Bratt as detective Rey Curtis, adopts a bewildered melancholy for their roles. The cast and crew of Law & Order call themselves "the family," and the label says everything about the cheery nature of their relationship.

"When we see each other there's smiles, there's hugs, there's kisses," says Merkerson of her frequent on-screen accompanists Orbach and Bratt. "They genuinely love me and I genuinely love them." Meanwhile Harmon, in her first season on the show, has similar praise for Waterston. "He's brilliant. I'm a perfectionist and he's taught me so much. I usually learn something from Sam at least once a day."

Through the years, one of the show's strengths has been the equality of those family members: no one actor has stood above the other members of the ensemble and pulled the focus away from the show itself. Heavyweight actors like Michael Moriarty and Paul Sorvino have come and gone, along with six other principals, but the show keeps plugging along. Still, the ensemble nature has made it tough to sell the show: Without a single marquee star like, say, Courteney Cox from the Friends ensemble, viewers took longer to warm to it. Over the past year, then, Law & Order has received an unintentional—if not unwelcome—boost from all the attention surrounding Benjamin Bratt's relationship with Julia Roberts. (Rumor has it that Roberts is scheduled to guest-star in the 200th episode, airing May 5.)

"We all love Ben," says Merkerson, sounding like an approving older sister. "The attention tickles me because he really is a great guy, so whatever press he gets, as long as it's positive, I think it's great for the show and it's great for him. He's one of the good guys." During a break in filming, Orbach agrees with Merkerson's assessment, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper to explain Bratt's appeal. "When Ben first came on the show, I said, 'Get him to take his shirt off once. Let's see him in his strapped T-shirt once, so the ladies will know what's under the suit; I want them to see that this guy is really built like Schwarzenegger.'"

Later, on location in Brooklyn, Bratt hears about this and laughs. "I find that hysterical," he says, almost embarrassed. "On most levels the attention is a bother, mostly because my personal life truly is no one else's business. But I understand the curiosity it holds for people because I, like most other people, enjoy my little bits of gossip. It's just when it's focused on me, it's a bit more irritating," he says.

Much of that attention comes when Law & Order goes on location, which it does for about half of each episode's eight shooting days. Though the Texas-born Harmon could do without the cold weather during the winter shoots, she loves hitting the streets where the shows are actually set. "There's nothing better than us working on the court steps and the real assistant DAs and the real cops walk by and say, 'Way to go, Harmon!"' she says.

Still, not everyone takes notice of the cameras after all, this is New York, where people tend to be blase about such things as TV shoots. "Jerry and Ben had a scene once where they were shooting outside, and they thought they had closed off the block," recalls Merkerson. "But somebody got through. The guy whisked between them as they were doing the scene. They just looked at each other and continued on with the scene and that was the take that was used."

This is the fourth season of Bratt and Orbach's on-screen pairing, but no one knows how long it will continue. Bratt has talked about leaving for other projects—he and his brother Peter produced Follow Me Home, an award-winning film that played at Sundance three years ago—and the show changes principal actors on a fairly regular basis. "The cast changes have kept it interesting for the audience," acknowledges Orbach. "People get fired, they move, they have a baby, or they get transferred, you know? It's kind of like life."