Can ‘Law & Order’ outlast ‘Gunsmoke’?

< Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Television video

Fox News hosts make outrageous claims
Dec. 14: Countdown’s Keith Olbermann discusses Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck’s attacks on a Law and Order: SVU episode which they felt portrayed them in an unfair light.

Palin responds to Shatner's beat poetry

Funniest TV shows of the decade

Palin surprises 'Tonight Show'

Tiger remains silent, late-night doesn’t

Plasma computer screens sit atop desks cluttered with papers, folders, coffee cups and tired old books. A series of hallways leads from the den of offices to a courtroom scattered with wooden witness boxes that the crew will clear for later scenes. Even more passageways lead to the morgue, which contains the requisite storage spaces for dead bodies. The Rikers Island jail is recreated, complete with an admissions office and steely gates through which inmates pass to enter the slammer.

The true star of the set, though, is the squad room, a virtual museum of "Law & Order" nostalgia. Though some NYPD precincts updated their look following the Sept. 11 attacks, Wolf left it alone "because it actually is so emblematic of the show," Berner said.

Computers displaying screen grabs of Web sites and fingerprint scans are flourishes of the new, yet the old-school grit continues: a retro typewriter; peeling green paint; the worn look of a sign that reads, "N.Y.C. Detectives: the greatest detectives in the WORLD."

Story continues below ↓

advertisement | your ad here

An American flag hangs above a doorway. An empty holding cell, big enough for one, stands next to a bulletin board littered with "Wanted" posters. A coffee pot awaits a refill — and, oddly, there are no doughnuts.

Here, like so many before them, detectives Bernard and Lupo crack cases.

"Ted Sanderson — he did nine years for killing his wife until DNA evidence cleared him last year," Bernard, wearing a gray suit and stern expression, informs Van Buren as cameras roll for the third take of a one-minute scene in her office.

Bernard, who thinks Sanderson murdered his wife's ex, tells the boss the suspect drives a white Suffolk County truck (which may be the vehicle that ran over the victim); Lupo, who's not so sure Sanderson is the guy, stands in the doorway.

Van Buren directs the duo to "take a closer look."

They file out, and that's a wrap.

Anderson becomes himself again, laughing boisterously at a personal joke between him and Sisto.

The race to outlive "Gunsmoke" was never so much fun.

< Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4