Front Burner - Law & Order Toronto and why the franchise endures

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent premiered last Thursday.The series, adapted by CityTV, features cases that are 'ripped from headlines' from Canada's largest city, Toronto. It films in Toronto neighbourhoods and has a very Canadian cast and crew.It is also part of a long-running network TV franchise that premiered back in 1990, and one that seems to have weathered the changes in TV as a medium, and changes in attitudes towards police and the justice system. Today, Vulture TV critic Kathryn VanArendonk on Law & Order's Toronto spinoff, and why the franchise still draws a big audience.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. So let's start with a very pressing question on this Tuesday morning. What makes a world-class city? Is it hosting the Olympics?

Live from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in the foothills of the majestic Rocky Mountains, welcome to Alberta's Rocky Mountain salute to the 15th Olympic Winter Games. Maybe, maybe, maybe. The Pan Am Games. The 13th Pan American Games have come home to Winnipeg. I guess so. A World Cup game? Well, the FIFA World Cup is coming to Vancouver. BC Place will be home to seven games in 2026. That includes five... Okay. Or is it a Law & Order franchise?

In Toronto's war on crime... I'm Detective Graff. This is Detective Bateman. The worst offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Specialized Criminal Investigations Unit. These are their stories. I know I'm not supposed to have an opinion here, but did Calgary, all you Calgarians out there, did you guys have a crack-smoking mayor whose story will be featured on Law & Order Toronto Criminal Intent? I think not. The first episode of this new season, it aired last week. And today I'm talking to Catherine

Van Arendong from Vulture about Law & Order Toronto and the long-running series, Wider Impact. Catherine, hey, it's great to have you on FrontBurner. Hey, thanks so much for having me. So before we get into this new Canadian spinoff of Law & Order, let's talk about your relationship to the franchise. Are you a fan? Do you like it? It is a complex question. it? It is a complex question. It is. I wish it were a very simple yes or no, but I just think that is not my relationship or actually I think a lot of people's relationship with Law & Order. I have been watching Law & Order since I only had access to linear television because streaming did

not exist. And I spent a lot of time watching Law & Order marathons and just all over television. Yeah, all over television. All over. Every different flavor. The original one, SVU, Criminal Intent. And so it would be a lie to say that I don't enjoy law and order. I there is something really powerful about its rhythms, about its a lot of its cast members, about the way it presents a picture of of policing and the justice system.

And and there is something very rhythmically soothing about it. The music. Yeah, I have to say for transparency, I too have watched my share of Law & Order in my life. I remember spending, you know, large chunks of my time at university just kind of like binging it. I would like drag my laundry over to my aunt's house and crush like 11 episodes of Law & Order. episodes of Law & Order. Although I haven't watched it in a very long time until last night when I watched the first Toronto Law & Order spinoff. I know you watched it too. What do you think? Well, so it's interesting. I was a little bit curious about why it is called Law & Order Toronto colon criminal intent and not just Law & Order colon Toronto, right? And for people who are not as fully steeped in Law & Order formats.

Yeah, this did not even occur to me. But there is like there was a Law & Order criminal intent. It's not on anymore, but it is a slightly tweaked structure from the original mothership law and order. And so that is that is what shape this show is in. It is a slightly different. It does not have that divide of the first half of it is about police investigation and the second half is about a court case. It is much more about just the police investigation. A lawyer shows up sometimes to be like, hey, I need more evidence. And then they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you go back to the case. And that's kind of that's kind of the whole idea. The other thing that's different from a criminal intent format versus a regular one is you sort of know at some point who did it. But the police don't necessarily know yet.

And so you're watching them put the pieces together. Yeah. So that's the structure here. Yeah. Why do you yeah. Why do you think that is? I mean, I know typically one of the biggest challenges with Canadian spinoffs of international franchises is that they operate on smaller budgets. And is it because they're like, well, we can't we can't afford to do the other side of it. We don't want to hire too many lawyer actors. Yeah, I mean, I would be really interested to know what the what the breakdown is. But that certainly would make sense that you have fewer regulars that you need when you don't need a like half of a police station cast and half of a courtroom cast. That's also a lot of sets that you don't have to build and keep standing for a long

time because you're going to need a district attorney's office and you're going to need a courtroom. And I think that's a little bit of it. I do wonder if one of the other reasons is that it allows you to spend more time with the police officers. And part of the success of Law & Order SVU and Criminal Intent when it was on versus the regular structure of the original Law & Order was your investment in these people's sort of private lives and their interactions with each other. And SVU has done much better in the long-term ratings

than the other Law & Orders. And so I wonder a little bit if part of the logic of criminal intent is like, let's just really invest in these main characters. Did you like it? I feel like we have a complex here in Canada where we only really like to watch and consume American shows and American media. So, you know, what did you like? What did you think? I think it I think it was fine. I think it has room to grow.

That's very polite. that way, it takes time for everyone to kind of ease into who they are and what these characters are supposed to be, particularly because they're not given a lot of lines and they're not given a lot of space to really explore who those characters are. And so with more time, I can imagine the chemistry working better. But the rhythms were pretty good. And I will say one thing that it really has going for it is that there is this thing with other international versions of law and order. There has been an agreement where they have been required to reuse scripts from the first law and order. So Law and Order UK. In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups,

the police who investigate crime and the crown prosecutors who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories. Those earliest episodes are just adapted versions of American scripts, and it does not work very well. And so it is to the credit of, and I think sort of a reason for optimism that this Canadian version was able to write an original script. that this Canadian version was able to write an original script. Oh, that's really interesting. I did not know that. And I mean, talking about original scripts,

this isn't really a question, but just our listeners might be interested. So this one was kind of loosely based on the Gerald Cotton Quadriga case that people might recognize, the crypto case. This is a real mystery that's unfolding this morning, and it all has to do with the death of the CEO in India. Here he is here, Gerald Cotton. He's the founder of Quadriga CX. And along with his death, the problem here is also access to his laptop. And that laptop contains the $250 million, thousands of potential Canadian accounts there, and they all might be gone.

The trailer absolutely looks like it's going to include a Mayor Rob Ford crack smoking. You have to, right? I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine. Do you smoke crack cocaine? Exactly. Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. It would have to. Exactly. Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. It would have to. Yeah.

So, yeah, it is very Canadian plot lines and Canadian actors. How do we know how well some of those spinoffs have done? So you mentioned Law & Order UK. Have they done well? Because I would imagine it's no simple task to go up against law and order, you know, New York, like to take law and order out of New York. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're not making any more of law and order UK. So that's part of the answer there. So not incredible. Yeah. I don't know. You know, these things are it seems like they should be very plug and play.

And for the most part, you know, police procedurals do a lot better, are a lot more reliable than other kinds of original dramas that that end up flailing on network television. Right. There is still some X factor that it can be really difficult to plan for or to just, you know, assume will happen. And there are a lot of police procedurals inside and outside of the Law & Order franchise that you think would be really great hits and then they don't go anywhere. And then the one that you really hated, I'm looking at you, the American show Bull. Pete Peters, Dr. Jason Bull. Can you help my son? Absolutely. It actually ends up running for like a bazillion seasons. And you. Can you help my son? Absolutely. I actually ends up running for

like a bazillion seasons and you're like, how? Why? So yeah, it's hard to say. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I'm curious, you know, Law & Order generally, how many people are still watching it? Like all of network television, the ratings are not doing great compared to the historical Law & Order numbers. Its high watermark was like 17 million, and the current season is about 5 million. And actually, they're very happy about that. It is

better than it was doing last season and uh and that you might hear those numbers and be like wow that sounds bad the thing is compared to how everything else is doing on network television that's like money in the bank baby like that is a reliable core of people who keep coming back. And it is a safer and more consistent number than most other shows are doing on network TV right now. So the answer is like, not great, but it's kind of not their fault. Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, I know the show's creator, or there's so many of them, right? There's been so many spinoffs. And one of the big constants has been Dick Wolf. It's creator. And what do we know about, of the reasons why it's been able to withstand the test of time and still do pretty well. Yeah. So Dick Wolf, he doesn't do a ton of press. He's not out there talking a lot about his wild success. There are fun little facts that you can find about him if you dig around a lot. Like, I think there's a rumor I heard that his ringtone is the Law and Order Dun Dun.

There's also reporting that he has boats with names like the Misdemeanor. But other than that, he is not a person who is really a big public persona. And he has built this huge franchise, this huge world. Wolf Films is a big, big, big production. They don't just make Law & Order. They also make FBI, which has now had several of its own spinoffs. It's a really successful franchise here. of its own spinoffs, is a really successful franchise. Here, I'm Agent Bell, and this is my partner, Agent Zidane. What happened? And he is still sitting at the top of it. He does not have his hands in a lot of the everyday parts of making the shows, as far as I understand. But he had a story credit on the first episode

of this season of Law and Order, which I thought was pretty fascinating. And so I think there is a lot of what these shows are about and the kinds of ideology that they tend to evince that is a reflection of who Dick Wolf is and who his interests are. But you can really only see it in reverse, right? It's not like he's out there saying what his ideology is and then you see it in the shows. It's like you look at the body of the shows and you think, huh, what are the kind of common denominators here? Talk to me more about that, the common denominators or the formula that has spelled some of the show's success, at least. Yeah, they are very much in keeping with a long historical line of police and policing shows on television that came out of radio.

So, you know, some of the earliest shows, the really big successes in those mediums were shows like Dragnet. And that those shows, which were born out of actually collaboration with the Los Angeles Police Department, are kind of where we have our modern sense of policing in a lot of major mainstream entertainment, that the police tend to be the central characters in a story. Police reporting is reliable, that police sometimes have to do things that are maybe not entirely within the law. But like when you're in there watching them in the room, like it seems reasonable and you can understand why they did it and they have their best, who want good, just outcomes, and who are working as hard as they possibly can to make that happen.

It is an institutionalist idea of justice. And you're saying people have been drawn to that. They like that. It's very comforting. I mean, particularly in a world where it feels like a lot of things are unstable, if what you can turn to is the regularity over and over and over again of like a bad, terrible, upsetting thing happened. People cared about it. They tried to understand what happened and they tried to they couldn't fix it, but they at least tried to make the person who did it, you know, be punished for that action.

Yeah, we there is a part of us that are children and we just want an authority figure. Right. You literally were could have just been describing a Paw Patrol episode. Yes. As well. Whenever your art art disappears just yell for help which is very funny and also criticize uh for being too pro-police as well uh as is law and order which is which is just one thing i wanted to bring up with you before we go because i totally see what you're saying but also our attitudes have shifted towards the police and the justice system over the last three decades. Certainly. Right. And do you think that's influenced the show? Do you think it's influenced the people watching the show? How is Law & Order grappled with that, if they even have?

They certainly have. There are all kinds of plots that have been particularly on SVU. But I see it in The Mothership, which after its return to the in the last couple of years as well. There are plots that are on those shows that would never have been on Law and Order in 1994. They have the main characters saying things like, I'm just not sure that we're doing the right thing. There are a lot more plots about police corruption, about police bias. And now? I don't know. How much did that bias affect my choices, affect my decisions as a cop? Which means that it begins with a problem. You have returning characters, but you're really not invested in them that much in their lives. So they have a problem. They fix it. The episode ends.

And then you repeat it the next week. And if you are using that as the structure for a murder where it was like there was a murder and then the murder was found. That's one thing. If you are trying to use that same structure to deal with something like institutional bias, where, you know, what you're talking about is a Black Lives Matter case or in the case of SVU, the large backlog of rape kits that have never been tested. Even if what you're talking about is this thing that is unsolvable in any short term capacity, the episode is still short term. You still get an hour of it and then it ends and the next week you're back to a murder. Right. Yeah. And so it is not built to take on the kinds of big, overarching, sort of messy questions about the justice system. And so even

when it does, even when you'll get this one hour where you're like, oh, wow, maybe there's some massive shift that's happening inside the writers' rooms here, it'll still end. And then you'll come back next week and it'll be like, wow, that CEO, I think he's a bad guy. Let's bring him down. Just one question before we go. Looking back on the influence of the show over time, how much of an impact has a franchise like this had on the way that you think average viewers think about the police and the justice system? This kind of thing is really hard to measure. It's not like we can really go and take polls of, you know, large groups of people and then say, what do you think about the police? And then tie that back specifically to any one thing. Yeah. And so, well, I do love Law and

Order. Right. Exactly. And my hero is Detective Olivia Benson. And that's why I think. Yeah. But it is suggestive. You kind of look at it in a lot of other ways. The ratings of the show, for instance, we may have a lot of shifting ideas about how policing works and its potential biases, but these shows are still doing or not, there are other kinds of stories you can tell about the world. And so it is striking how disproportionate this genre still is in television. I mean, again, not directly, but there have been a lot of, you know, defund the police was a rallying cry for a very short period of time. And it now is a toxic thing to say. did any one specific thing, it is so much a part of the ether that you really have to talk about it when you're trying to talk about any other big part of this conversation. All right.

I think that's a great place to end. Catherine, thank you for this. Oh, my pleasure. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.