The Wolf pack
With over 2,000 hours of TV under his belt, 4 decades with the Universal Television network, and 9 shows currently on air, it’s perhaps unsurprising that NBC just renewed 6 shows from legendary producer Dick Wolf.
Best known for his genre-defining work on Law & Order (and its many offshoots), Wolf is one of the most prolific television producers of all time, with this latest crop of renewals taking his tally to over 84 seasons on NBC.
Criminal consistency
The super producer began work on Law & Order back in 1988 and, after getting dropped by Fox and CBS, the show found a home on NBC in 1990. Though the original show was canceled in 2010, the franchise never really left our screens, with popular spin offs like Criminal Intent and Special Victims Unit racking up another 34 seasons between them and the original series getting rebooted by the network in 2022.
A cynic might call Law & Order formulaic — but it's that remarkable consistency in the eyes of viewers that's been its most admirable attribute. In the show’s original run from 1990-2010, just 1 of the 456 episodes scored below 7 on the rating site IMDB. Compare that to average ratings for the only two US scripted shows with more seasons, The Simpsons (here) and the aforementioned Wolf offering Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (here), and the show that spawned a mega franchise looks even more impressive.
Go deeper: see how other shows stack up on one of our favorite websites SeriesHeat here.
