Courting Women

Cast members from Law & Order: Trial By Jury. From left, Susan Blommaert as Judge Steinman, Lorraine Bracco as Carla Grizzano, Bebe Neuwirth as Tracey Kibre and Amy Carlson as Kelly Gaffney. (AP Photo/NBC Universal)

In the recent Law & Order: Trial by Jury pilot, beautiful, whip-smart Judge Amanda Anderlee (played by Candice Bergen) presided over a murder trial fought by brainy, thoroughbred clothes-horse lawyers Tracey Kibre (Bebe Neuwirth) and Maggie Dettweiler (Annabella Sciorra). The jury foreman (black), ace jury consultant (Asian) and victim (blonde) were also female.

Any men, you’re wondering? Yeah, the perp, a Broadway producer who, according to one actress-witness, offered the following motivation to a female character: “He said it was like when you strangle a dog, just before they die they fall in love with you. They look into your eyes and wag their tail.”

Hmmn.

This being a crime show, there were other male cops and district attorneys around. Although their jobs amounted to little more than filing glowing reports on Bergen and Neuwirth: “Amanda is my kind of judge!”; “She’s tough, smart and hates to lose. I’d hate to have [Tracey] on my case.”

What gives with the supreme courting of female viewers? Well, let’s rewind a dozen years to when Law & Order was in trouble. NBC gave creator Dick Wolf the word: the show wasn’t playing to women – more female characters or the series was cancelled.

A former ad executive who brought the ampersand from Procter & Gamble with him to TV, Wolf accepted the wisdom of NBC’s market research, hiring Jill Hennessy as assistant D.A. Claire Kincaid. Ratings jumped and – what a surprise – male characters became more interesting with women around. The best drama on TV was saved. Ever since, Wolf has tinkered with the estrogen level of his shows – a product line that now includes Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and, as of March, Law & Order: Trial by Jury. (All shows air on CTV in Canada.)

From Law & Order, Jerry Orbach (right) as Lennie Briscoe , and Jesse L. Martin as Detective Ed Green. AP Photo/NBC by Jessica Burstein.

The original L&O is about done. CTV doesn’t even have a slot for the drama, but fits it in when other U.S. series repeat. On the other hand, Tuesday night’s Special Victims Unit, with its soap opera plots and kinky cast (Richard Belzer and Ice T are detectives and Jayne Mansfield’s daughter, Mariska Hargitay, is a lead cop) has seen its ratings take off this past season.

Trial by Jury is a more obvious pitch to females. Watching it, we can imagine a cynical marketing consultant confiding in Wolf: “Hey, L&O is what it is – Loyal & Old. Reality shows win young viewers; CSI has the boy forensics thing happening. You want a shot with a new show, go comfy slippers: put it on Friday, when 18 to 34s are on the town. Go after the single mom stuck home at 10 o'clock.”

And so the second episode of the series, which aired in what will be its regular Friday 10 p.m. time slot, was the story of a deadbeat dad represented by a cad lawyer. Let’s hope the nadir of the series remains the scene where Judge Amanda (Bergen) is in the cafeteria with two female justices, thrilling to stories about barrister Miles LaSalle's fast hands: "When I first took the bench," one judge dishes, "LaSalle once put the moves on me in chambers."

All of this makes Trial by Jury sound awful, so I should stop right now and say, as a long-time L&O fan, I rather enjoyed the first episodes and already prefer the series to the lurid Special Victims Unit, which bears the same relationship to the original Law & Order that cherry cola does to Coke.

Give him credit. Dick Wolf, who wrote the strangled dog scene I mentioned eariler, is one of those genius hacks like Elmore Leonard who can tell the same story over and over and make you like it. Sixteen years on, L&O is formula stuff. Wolf even borrowed the idea of a combination police procedural-courtroom drama from an obscure 1963 ABC drama, Arrest and Trial, with Ben Gazzara and Chuck Connors.

The plot is always the same: police investigate and make the arrest, then throw to the D.A., who takes the case to court. But for craftsmen like Wolf, rigid plotting is the mother of invention. How do you do the same thing differently and make it work? In the Trial by Jury pilot, the writer-producer sets the killer’s confession to his lawyer in a Wall Street penthouse. As he admits to murder we see the Statue of Liberty – a wrenching juxtaposition that makes us wonder if the Lady of the Harbour represents the scales of justice.

A better bit in Trial by Jury’s second episode has us following a cop out of court as the jury comes in. We expect to cut back to the bench for the decision, but instead the camera stays with gathering policemen who jostle around a window to “see” the verdict. And so the resolution of a grisly murder trial plays out in suspenseful pantomime.

The new Law & Order also offers a promising lead in Bebe Neuwirth (Cheers), who makes us feel the parachute-jump excitement every D.A. experiences when approaching a jury in a big trial.

 

Left to right: Sam Waterston, Bebe Neuwirth, Amy Carlson and Fred Thompson in Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Courtesy CTV.

Still, Trial by Jury faces stiff competition. Not from CSI or reality shows, but from Law & Order itself. In Canada, L&O is now on four nights a week. And Bravo runs the show weeknights at 11:00 in syndication. South of the border, where the series plays up to 50 times a week, Law & Order re-runs currently rank 1st, 5th, 10th and 11th in cable ratings. (Before Trial by Jury, L&O earned NBC more than $1 billion US in 2004 ad revenues.)

As every L&O diehard knows, there is no competing with the series in its prime. That would be around 1993, when Hennessy dropped onto the show to assist D.A. Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), and the investigating detectives were Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan (Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth).

What made that show work was the creative team’s balanced interest in its cast. Orbach perfected Philip Marlowe’s acid deadpan. Once, upon discovering a university ID on a murder victim, the detective tartly observed, “She can forget about midterms.” Moriarty’s statuesque D.A. was more interesting still – a practised con man who regarded law as performance art.

The best parts of the series were the “&” moments when cops and lawyers got together over coffee to conspire against bad guys. Dick Wolf hoped to get some street-cop grit into Trial by Jury by transferring Briscoe here from the original show. But Jerry Orbach died after the second episode was shot.

Women are often the last demographic battleground for selling everything from TV shows to cars and political candidates. Probably because the creators of the aforementioned products never gave them a first thought before getting into trouble. Trial by Jury isn’t yet in trouble. Almost 18 million U.S. viewers watched the series debut. But for the new L&O to work it has to forget demographics and start thinking about characters. The show isn’t out of whack because it has too many women. Rather, it has too much Order and not enough Law.

Lenny Briscoe, may he rest in peace, had a great response to people who lived by categories. Once he and Mike Logan were relaxing, reading the classifieds:

Mike: “Looking for a date?”
Lennie (reading): “Open-minded MBBF seeks mature man.”
Mike: “What’s that? Male bisexual bondage freak?”
Lennie: “Me, I’m more in the mood for a BLT.”

Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.