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When Law & Order premiered on a quiet Thursday night in 1990, the show was fairly unassuming. Created by Dick Wolf, the series offered an in-depth look at the New York City criminal-justice system with “ripped from the headlines” story lines. While the split “Law” and “Order” format of the show — detective work in the first half, prosecutorial action in the second — was originally created in an effort to sell syndication rights for an hourlong show to traditionally 30-minute-block networks (per Wolf’s 2003 book, Law & Order: Crime Scenes), the formula quickly became an essential part of the franchise’s gimmick. The TV behemoth came to influence not only the various Law & Order…
