Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Tonight marks the return of Law & Order: Criminal Intent to NBC, following a season spent banished to NBC's sister cable company, USA Network.  The Law & Order spin-off will take the 9pm timeslot and serve as lead-in for the returning parent show, which opened its 18th season last week with a two-hour premiere.

In a desperate move, major networks have had to resort to some last-minute repurposing in order to fill in the vacuum that's been left by a running out of original scripted episodes due to the two-month long writers' strike.  So while Law & Order: Criminal Intent's seventh season has been airing on USA since October, NBC will still begin with the season opener tonight, before proceeding with the rest of the seventh season in weeks to come.

In related news, not only is Law & Order crossing over sister networks, the franchise has been crossing continents, languages and cultures.  At the moment, there are already French and Russian versions of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, as well as a Russian edition of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Most recently, NBC and Dick Wolf, the man behind the entire Law & Order universe, have been in talks with a British company for the creation of the first ever international version of the oldest of the Law & Order series.

According to reports, the U.K. edition tentatively called Law & Order: London will be produced by Kudos Films, the same outfit responsible for Life on Mars and Hustle.  Broadcaster ITV is in line to air the show, pitching an uncommon 13-episode commitment to begin with.

As with the French and Russian renditions of Criminal Intent and Special Victims Unit, the proposed British Law & Order will make use of existing scripts from the original NBC program which will be tweaked and modified to allow for the difference in criminal justice systems.


-Rosario Santiago, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Zap2it, The Hollywood Reporter
(Image Courtesy of NBC)