Back after a 12-year interregnum is "Law & Order," the Coca-Cola Classic of NBC's Dick Wolf universe. It's not as if the brand, or its sister brand of shows that begin with the word "Chicago," has been moribund in the meantime, with its hot-button topics, its where-and-when title cards, accompanied by a signature dun-dun. Still, it is nice in a way to have back a "Law & Order" that builds its episodes around homicides rather than, like "Law & Order: SVU," sex crimes — even though the opening episode in the long-in-coming 21st season does involve sex crimes. And you will find that, except in the manner the series was always changing, swapping new characters in and out over its many years, the taste remains the same.
With the show's usual slightly-behind-the-curve topicality, the season's first victim is … not Bill Cosby, of whom you are absolutely meant to think, the traditional "the following story is fictional, etc." disclaimer at the top of the show notwithstanding. ("Law & Order" takes its stories from the news, but rearranges the words and changes the names.) Here, the victim is a musician, convicted of rape, then sprung from prison on account of a prosecutor's misstep. (That prosecutor is played by guest star Carey Lowell, a "Law & Order" regular back in the 1990s.)
Bridging the temporal gap are Sam Waterston, back as Jack McCoy, now the New York district attorney, and Anthony Anderson as Det. Kevin Bernard, newly partnered with Jeffrey Donovan's Frank Cosgrove in the NYPD's Ripped From the Headlines Division. Bernard, who is calm, courtly and considered ("Every victim deserves respect, even the ones that raped 40 women") and Cosgrove, a bit of a hothead ("I speak my mind, probably about things I shouldn't speak my mind about, but it's just how I'm wired"), are still taking each other's measure; they will have occasion to dialectically examine issues of police practices, community and race relations and so on. (Of all "Law & Order" series, the original is also the one least interested in the personal lives of its characters.) They report to Camryn Manheim's Lt. Kate Dixon, in the position most notably and lengthily occupied by S. Epatha Mekerson (now a regular, as a different character, in Wolf's "Chicago Med").
