Crossover: "The Beat" and "Homicide: Life On The Street"/"Law And Order: Special Victims Unit"

The Beat and Homicide: Life On The Street / Law And Order: Special Victims Unit

The Beat (2000)
Homicide: Life On The Street (1993-1999)
Law And Order: Special Victims Unit (1999- )
Type: Crossover
Group 2

Good Lord! Richard Belzer in his role of Detective John Much is the king of crossovers! Munch started as a regular on NBC's Baltimore cop drama Homicide. Then Homicide did a bunch of crossovers with NBC's New York set cop show Law And Order. THEN Munch popped up on the Fox Network's The X-Files making Munch one of the few characters to do a crossover onto a show on another network.

Okay, so Homicide gets canceled. End of Munch? Hell no. The next season NBC started a Law And Order spin off Law And Order: Special Victims Unit and Munch, transferring from Baltimore, showed up as one of the units detectives. The same season found Munch again in Baltimore for a Homicide reunion TV movie. But wait! That ain't all!

In the second half of the 1999-2000 season, Homicide producers Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson premiered a new cop drama called The Beat. It told the story of beat cops in New York City using a gritty real life style in the tradition of Homicide. Hold on though. These are beat cops in New York? Say... isn't Munch now working in New York? Faster than you can say "did someone call my name" Munch pops up in a cameo at one of the officers' crime scenes.

This crossover puts Belzer into the pantheon of the gods of crossovers. First of all, given that he has been a regular character on TWO shows, every time he does an appearance on another show like this, it ends up counting as a crossover for both shows. On top of that, The Beat aired on the UPN network. I think this makes Munch the only character to do two cross-network crossovers between three different networks. If Richard Belzer is looking for a new goal, can I suggest trying to do appearances as Munch on ABC, CBS and the WB network? The idea of Munch actually appearing on every single network is really amusing. If he can pull that off, I would then recommend him trying to resurrect the long dead Dumont TV network and appearing on it so he can have a clean sweep.

Poobala.com Main Page/ Email Me