Spin Off: "Law And Order: Trial By Jury" and "Law And Order"/"Law And Order: Criminal Intent"/"Law And Order:SVU"

Law And Order: Trial By Jury and Law And Order (ALL of them)

Law And Order: Trial By Jury (2005)
Conviction (2006)
Law And Order (1990-    )
Law And Order: Criminal Intent (2001-    )
Law And Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-    )
Type: Spin Off
Group 2

So here's an oddity: a Law And Order series that didn't run for years and years. It didn't even run for "year" period. Weirder still, it wasn't a half bad show and didn't get half bad ratings.

The original Law And Order had a simple premise. Set up a crime, spend the first half of the show having the cops catching the criminal and the second half having the district attorneys prosecuting them in court. Each additional spin off had a more specific premise. In the case of Trial By Jury that premise was to concentrate more on the prosecutors rather than the cops.

Not that there weren't cops. Front and center was Jerry Orbach as Detective Lennie Briscoe, the longest running character from the original Law And Order. His character had transferred over to do special work for the D.A.'s office. In real life actor Jerry Orbach was suffering health problems. Shifting to the new show allowed him to ease up on his work schedule. Sadly, after filming only a couple of episodes, and before a single episode had aired, Jerry Orbach died. The man was a legend and his death was a damn shame.

Also in the cast was Bebe Neuwirth as tough as nails Assistant District Attorney Tracey Kibre. Doing double duty appearing on Trial By Jury and the original Law And Order was Fred Dalton Thompson as tough but fair District Attorney Arthur Branch. Filling out the D.A.'s office was Amy Carlson as some-other-descriptive-lawyer-cliche A.D.A. Kelly Gaffney. Assisting Lennie with in the cop department was Scott Cohen as Detective Chris Ravell. Additionally, many other denizens of the various Law And Order would pop in for appearances.

The show hit the air mid-season 2004-2005 with quite a bit of promotion about it's including the final performances of Jerry Orbach. The series actually started with those episodes. As it continued its run it did okay in the ratings. I mean, it wasn't a monster hit but it performed respectably. It actually had better ratings than many other new shows premiering at the time. In fact it had better ratings than several shows that got picked up for another season. But, oddly, Trial By Jury didn't get picked up. It ran thirteen episodes and that was it. Buh bye. It was apparently just a victim of Law And Order overload. With three other Law And Order shows on the air, apparently more was expected of the show in the ratings department.

A final note. Having invested so much in sets, the Law & Order folks hated to see the investment go to waste. So the next season they produced another Law & Order series titled Conviction dealing with young lawyers. The show reused many of the Trial By Jury sets. Conviction didn't fare mcuh better.

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