Where Should a Law & Order Newcomer Start?
On Saturday, September 12, Law & Order sat at No. 98 on our chart of the most popular drama TV shows. Two weeks later, on Saturday, September 26, it was No. 33, the highest it has ever placed there. On our crime chart it climbed from No. 43 to No. 17 over the same fortnight, while Law & Order: Special Victims Unit held No. 1 on both. Our charts measure blended popularity. They tell us people are coming back to a show that first aired in 1990. They do not tell us why, and we are not going to guess.
What we can offer is timing. SVU opens its 28th season on Thursday, October 8 on NBC, and Christopher Meloni returns as Elliot Stabler for the show's 600th episode this season. TVLine put it neatly: "Det. Elliot Stabler is back on the beat... at least temporarily."
So if you are one of the people circling this franchise right now, you face a real problem. The original, SVU and Criminal Intent alone add up to more than 1,300 episodes. Nobody should try to watch them in order. Here is where to start instead.
Start with the original, in 1994
The mothership first, but not from episode one. Dick Wolf built Law & Order on a split that still works: the first half hour follows NYPD homicide detectives to an arrest, the second follows the Manhattan district attorney's office to a verdict. The early seasons, with Chris Noth as Mike Logan, are solid. The show gets great in season 5.
That is 1994, the year Sam Waterston arrives as Jack McCoy. Jerry Orbach has been playing Lennie Briscoe since season 3 and stays through season 14. Seasons 5 to 14 are the decade when both men are on screen, one on the street, the other in the courtroom. The show won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in 1997, right in the middle of that run. Pick any episode from those ten seasons and you are watching the franchise at its best.
SVU: the Benson and Stabler years
If you only have until October 8, spend most of it here. SVU premiered on September 20, 1999, with Mariska Hargitay as Olivia Benson and Meloni as her partner Stabler for the first 12 seasons. He left in 2011. Hargitay won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2006, the first regular from any Law & Order series to do it. Since 2019, SVU has been the longest-running primetime live-action series on American television.
Stabler's return is about that partnership, and the showrunner has said so plainly.
Organized Crime: the Stabler bridge
Law & Order: Organized Crime brought Stabler back on April 1, 2021, returning to the NYPD after his wife's murder and joining an Organized Crime Task Force to find her killers. It plays differently from the rest of the family: it opened with a two-hour crossover with SVU and then told one storyline stretched across many episodes, with Dylan McDermott as crime boss Richard Wheatley as the early antagonist. It ran five seasons, the last on Peacock, and was cancelled in April. It also went through six showrunners in five seasons, so treat season 1 as the essential part and the rest as optional.
Criminal Intent: the detour
Law & Order: Criminal Intent has nothing to do with October 8, and we would still tell you to watch it. It premiered on September 30, 2001, with Vincent D'Onofrio as Robert Goren and Kathryn Erbe as Alexandra Eames, and it flips the formula by following the criminals' lives alongside the investigation. It ran ten seasons, moving to USA Network in 2007. Save it for after the premiere.
The ten-day plan before October 8
- Days 1 to 3: a handful of Law & Order episodes from seasons 5 to 14. You are learning the rhythm the whole family is built on.
- Days 4 to 7: SVU season 1, then jump to season 12, Stabler's last.
- Days 8 and 9: Organized Crime season 1, which brought Stabler back through a crossover with SVU.
- Day 10: the SVU season 27 premiere, where Stabler reunites with Benson at a wake and tells her he loves her. TVLine lists it as his last appearance before this return.
Then watch the premiere on Thursday, October 8, and see why so many of you went looking.
