A Clear 'Intent'
Producer of third Law & Order series is adamant about avoiding serialized stories
By: Tim Clodfelter
Winston-Salem Journal
September 29, 2001
According to producer Dick Wolf, one of the keys to the success of his Law & Order shows has been avoiding serialized stories. _ "You look back over the history of the most successful hour shows in syndication - whether it was Columbo, Rockford, Murder, She Wrote or Law & Order - the most successful shows are the ones where it doesn't matter if you've missed three episodes in a row and come back," he said. "You don't have to know who is sleeping with anybody, you don't have to know who is getting divorced."
In 1999, Law & Order was joined by a spinoff series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Starting this week, NBC will introduce a third series, Law & Order: Criminal Intent (9 p.m. Sunday on NBC).
Although all three shows are about law enforcement in New York, each has a different approach. The original Law & Order splits its time between police and
prosecutors, and SVU focuses on a unit that investigates sex crimes. Criminal Intent will tell stories from the points of view of both the police and the criminals. The cast includes Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe as New York police detectives, with Jamey Sheridan as their supervisor and Courtney B. Vance as the district attorney who often works with them.
Criminal Intent will take the same self-contained approach as its two predecessors.
"The story is paramount," Wolf said. "There are no dangling participles, there are no runners, there are no arcs. You get a complete hour of television.... I think that's what audiences really react to most strongly. You get into serialized elements, and four or five years into a show, it's getting extremely soap opera-y."
The promise that Criminal Intent will avoid melodrama is one of the things that first attracted D'Onofrio to the series.
"The thing that I was always scared about with television is that I've always had the fear of being involved in something that's too soapy," he said. "There are shows on television that I watch and that I enjoy as entertainment, but I've never been entertained by stuff that's too soapy.
"Doing television has always been just uninteresting to me. And Dick's idea, his concept for the show, what the show is and who my character is, was interesting.... It's kind of straight-out, really good storytelling. And, you know, I consider that's what I do for a living. I'm a storyteller. Or I help do that, anyway."
D'Onofrio said that he has been offered many TV roles in recent years but has always turned them down until now. Since he was cast in Criminal Intent, he has been working with the producers to develop his character, Detective Robert Goren.
"We're just warming up," he said, "and Rene Balcer, the writer, and I are getting to know each other and are telling each other stories. We both are experienced in this, because of my research in the roles I played, killers and cops and this and that. I've done a lot of psychological research, and we've got a lot of things to go back and forth with."
D'Onofrio developed an interest in acting by watching his father, an interior decorator, perform in community-theater productions.
"I eventually got on stage, and then when I went back to New York I started studying," D'Onofrio said.
"Once I tried it, I realized it wasn't as easy as it looked. That made me curious."
He is best known for his powerful big-screen roles, playing everything from a troubled private in Full Metal Jacket to Abbie Hoffman in Steal This Movie and a shape-shifting alien in Men in Black.
He has had a few guest roles on television, most notably an Emmy-nominated guest appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street, but Criminal Intent is his first series.
D'Onofrio credits the diversity of the roles he has played to one of his first directors.
"I've been really lucky," he said. "That's what Stanley Kubrick did for me early on in my career (with Full Metal Jacket). By giving me that role, and that movie turning out to be what it turned out to be, he set me up as a character actor. All through my career I've been able to play all kinds of parts, from silly things to really intense things."
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