Law & Order: UK

[fiat_knox]

Flodwick Crosses the Atlantic

Press Release

Okay, you're familiar with the Law & Order franchise, and the various spinoffs it has spawned - also, how Dick Wolf has managed to keep the product fresh year on year.

Well, he's brought out a new strand to the franchise ... and for the first time, he's set it outside of New York.

Not only that ... he's set this strand outside the USA altogether.

Law & Order has come to London.

The characters are English: instead of Lieutenants, Captains and Officers, you have DCs, DSs and DIs (Detective Constables, Detective Sergeants and Detective Inspectors); instead of the District Attorney's Office you have barristers and briefs working for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

The Law, in this series comprises the ever-hungry DS Ronnie Brooks (played by the actor and entertainer Bradley Walsh), with DS Matt Devlin and their superior, DI Natalie Chandler. For the side of Order, we have Alesha Phillips, James Steel and George Castle.

Law & Order: UK

09/02/2009

The cream of British acting talent is brought together in an ensemble cast of extraordinary breadth to star in Law & Order: UK.

The new series for ITV1 is based on the enormously successful US format created by two time Emmy award-winning producer Dick Wolf. It will be co-produced by Kudos Film and Television, Wolf Films and NBC Universal.

Bradley Walsh (Torn, Coronation Street) is DS Ronnie Brooks, a real East End, copper’s copper, friend and partner to the charming DS Matt Devlin, Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica, The Last Detective, Ultimate Force) whose approach to policing is part seduction part force. Both report to DI Natalie Chandler (Harriet Walter, The Young Victoria, Atonement, Sense and Sensibility) a working mum who would back them to the end.

While the CPS team comprises Ben Daniels (The Passion, The State Within, Cutting It) as dedicated Senior Crown Prosecutor James Steel, a man on a mission for justice; Freema Agyeman (Dr Who, Torchwood, Little Dorrit) as hard working, strong-willed young prosecutor Alesha Phillips; and Bill Paterson (Little Dorrit, Criminal Justice, Sea of Souls) as their respected boss CPS director George Castle, a man trying to balance his ideals with the bigger picture.

The brainchild of creator Dick Wolf, Law & Order is the most successful brand in primetime U.S. television. It was the 1997 Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Drama Series and the record holder for the most consecutive (11) nominations for a drama series. It has also turned into one of TV entertainment’s most pre-eminent brands, with its successful spin-offs Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

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To Freema Agyeman's CV above, you can add an appearance in the first episode of the 2009 remake of Terry Nation's Survivors.

My verdict? This is Law & Order, all right. There's that same trademark musical shock and sudden cuts to black to introduce each new scene, and the formula which has worked so well for the US show on five has carried over strongly into this spinoff, too.

I feared that this show would come over as being like every other grim & gritty British crime drama that iTV has put onto our screens, from the likes of Prime Suspect to Trial & Retribution: but this one had a freshness, liveliness and vitality to it that I've come to associate with a Flodwick production. Each episode of the US shows has always pushed the boat out: and this strand does so by its very presence. It is a ballsy venture, and I feel that it can take off.

The case begins at a hospital, where the staff and patients are being evacuated because of a suspicious unclaimed holdall that has been left on the premises. On opening the bag, they discover the corpse of a tiny Anglo-Caribbean descent baby boy inside. He has been cleaned up and dressed, suggesting great care and remorse.

The cops track down the mother, who explains that the baby died when the shockingly flawed gas fittings in her flat had sprung carbon monoxide into the room. A big man, Mike Turner, appears and tells the police about the kid and the appalling conditions in the apartments.

At first suspicion turns to the mother and her sister ... but the cops soon begin to suspect something more sinister afoot, and the trail turns back to the landlord of the apartment block, Maureen Walters. It turns out that she has been a naughty girl, because she has realised that if she can drive out tenants from these flats in a way that violates their fixed term leases, she can then redevelop the flats for upscale clientele who will pay a lot more money to be closer to their businesses.

It turns out that she has a partner in this whole scheme, too, who has been helping Maureen out by bullying tenants and preventing people from coming in to perform even the most basic health & safety checks, with the intent of making the apartments unlivable so the tenants will leave of their own accord - one Mike Turner.

At first the trial stumbles, when a French translator screws up the translation of one of the tenants, someone who speaks very little English - but the second time around, they nail both Turner and Walters on bribery charges (they nail a corrupt supervisor in the local health & safety department, and he rats them both out).

The result is a success for the forces of law & order on their first outing, but when George Castle tells James Steel that it's over, he looks at the grieving family of the little boy, and tells George that it is over, for him and Castle. Not for the grieving mother.

In summary, it was a really good start. I look forward to the rest of the series, and I'll do my bit for the viewing figures. The higher those figures, the better - and the likelier that the series can be given a second season and allowed to continue.

Because, as any L & O fan knows, it's a series that can carry on quite happily even if virtually every member of the cast gets wiped out. Kept properly cultivated and well watered, it could run and run virtually forever.