For the past twenty years
Law & Order has been one of the biggest and most successful franchises in television history. The original
Law & Order series began on NBC on September 13, 1990 and spawned two popular spin-off's:
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (
SVU) and
Law & Order: Criminal Intent (
CI). A short-lived summer series,
Crime & Punishment, a focus on real cases and real trials, aired in 2002. In 2005, a one-season series,
Law & Order: Trial By Jury brought the wildly popular Lennie Briscoe character briefly back to television following his departure from the original series. A new series,
Law & Order: Los Angeles premiered in 2010 after the cancellation of the original series.
The story lines of
Law & Order made the phrase "ripped from the headlines" common television vernacular, the ever-evolving cast kept the series fresh and gave us favorites such as Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Mike Logan (Chris Noth). The flagship of the
Law & Order franchise is gone now (and
Criminal Intent is soon to be gone as well) but
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and
Law & Order: Los Angeles remain to keep the franchise alive in North America and around the world.