A Canadian Law & Order, Eh?
There are two shows that have my attention (well, technically three) this week.
The first is the return of the underrated Will Trent. It’s one of the more interesting procedural dramas on US TV in recent years, with its titular protagonist dealing with the trauma of abuse he went through as a kid. Admittedly, I fell off after a few episodes of the first season - but I can’t help but feel I’m missing out on something by not having stuck with it.
A Canadian spin-off of Law & Order: Criminal Intent has debuted this week on CityTV. As I can’t access that channel through, uh, Internet magic, I’ll give it some time until it turns up elsewhere (or I go rogue and track it down using Internet black magic). The trailer looks pretty good for it and reviews have been mostly positive.
Canada’s The Globe & Mail have this good feature article that goes into the making of the Canadian spin-off.
This Toronto iteration (a co-production of Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, Rogers Television, Lark Productions and Cameron Pictures Inc.) is the first international franchise to create its own plots and scripts. The showrunner is Tassie Cameron (Pretty Hard Cases, Rookie Blue). The stories are ripped from Canadian headlines. The cast and crew are homegrown. It’s also the biggest investment Rogers has made in original Canadian programming.
When Cameron first got the invitation to write a trial episode – she had to compete for the gig against other (unnamed) writers – she immediately thought about … the CN Tower. “It sounds silly, but I pictured the Toronto skyline with the Law & Order font,” she says. “I want to highlight the city I love, that I feel patriotic about. I understand how it might seem weird to celebrate a city in a show about murder, but making a world-class franchise here will be really exciting if we pull it off.”
As I couldn’t watch the Toronto edition of the cop drama, I instead finally pressed play on the OG Law & Order, which now has Veep/My Boys star Reid Scott in the lead. Also this week saw the departure of Sam Waterston as long-running character Jack McCoy.
Is it just me, or is Law & Order rather different these days? The first three episodes of the new season all incorporated interesting ideas around justice, citizenry, and the legal system’s role in supporting both. The show was far more compelling than I’ve seen it in the past (to be fair, I’ve never been a regular viewer, so I may not be giving previous incarnations of the show fair consideration).