‘Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent’ Boss Details U.S. & Canadian Differences

Canadian producer Tassie Cameron’s last show was the entertaining comedic cop series Pretty Hard Cases. Cameron is back this season once again working with the police in a spinoff of mega producer Dick Wolf‘s Law & Order franchise, arguably the most familiar title in TV cop series worldwide. Titled Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, the new show airing on The CW is inspired by the similarly titled profiler show that featured two talented detectives (played by Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe) on New York’s Major Case Squad and ran for 10 seasons.

In this iteration, Canadian actor Aden Young and Kathleen Munroe play partners Det. Sergeant Henry Graff, who never misses a clue, and talented but more compassionate Det. Sergeant Frankie Bateman. The series is a huge hit in Canada, winning Best Drama Series and Best Writing in a Drama Series at the 2025 Canadian Screen Awards .

Its storyline follows the original show pretty closely with some necessitated changes like a Crown Prosecutor instead of a District Attorney working on cases, and the elite team now called the Specialized Criminal Investigations Unit, rather than NYC’s Major Crimes Unit. Like its predecessor, says Cameron, the SCU “deals with homicides very high profile or too tough for other detectives to solve.”

With strong leads and complex crimes, L&O Toronto: Criminal Intent is faring well here so far. Three seasons have already been shot, with The CW confirming that Season 2 will air in 2026.

Below, TV Insider talks to Tassie Cameron about this first season and previews the November 12 episode, “The Sound of Silence.”  

How did Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent come about and what is the heart of the show?

Tassie Cameron: The Canadian network Rogers airs all the Law & Order originals out of the U.S. and has great success with them. They started exploring with Universal and the Wolf team the idea of doing an original Canadian Law & Order up here and Criminal Intent was the format that they landed on as the right one to try in Canada. As you know, Criminal Intent‘s format is different from the other series in that it goes into the bad guy’s point of view throughout the course of the episode. And so it is more of a psychological profile of the people behind the crime and more cat and mouse between the detectives and the criminals. Because you’re seeing the criminal’s point of view, I would say at its heart it is a Sherlock Holmes format. We’re trying to give enough clues and insight so that the audience can play along with our detectives as they figure it out.

Peter Stranks

Would you say Det. Sgt. Graff is the Sherlock, who knows a little something about everything and has great deduction skills?

Correct!

And DS Frankie Bateman may not be as deeply knowledgeable but she is instinctive and more emotional in her case solving?

She is far better at dealing with human beings than he is. She has great human instincts and, yes, more empathy than he does and thinks his lack of empathy can blind him at times in a way that hers doesn’t. We’ve tried to craft it that she’s not a sidekick to him, that she’s a crucial part of his process and she’s very important for their success together as a team.

Their differences show up this week, as we see Henry and Frankie handle a topical case involving sexual abuse, celebrity, and murder. Can you set up the plot?

The body of a young woman is found in a suitcase on a bus. (Doing our research we found that a lot of bodies are hidden that way. Sad but true.) When they look into her, she seems to have a high-risk lifestyle — she’s been fired from her job, she has some drug use history, and her roommate thinks she’s losing her mind. The obvious assumption would be that bad choices led her to this fate. As our people dig in, they learn she had worked at a high-profile radio show that’s led by Roman Rush [Tim Rozon], who has a cult-like following. It’s a universal tale that finds powerful media types who do terrible things being enabled by the people around them.

What sets off the crime?

Rush’s show is about to move to a big satellite station in a multimillion dollar deal, so there’s lots at stake.

Does misogyny come into the story?

It’s an environment of toxic masculinity, so there’s a “Me Too” element, but it’s also about enabling terrible behavior by both men and women who ignore bad behavior for their own gain. There are a number of possible suspects covering things up.

Since Henry is more of a just the facts ma’am detective, does the more sensitive Frankie take the lead when talking to female victims in this episode?

Very much. We’ve crafted this to be a really strong episode for Frankie. Most women have experienced harassment; every woman understands this. And so as a woman, you’re bringing your own point of view and your own perspective into these kinds of cases. I think that very consciously, Henry takes a back seat to her and realizes that she’s gonna be able to communicate with the women more empathetically and with more understanding than he is.

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Since this is a Canadian police show, can you mention some differences between the U.S. franchise and L&O Toronto? Or is policing pretty much the same?

I would say at this level of kind of elite homicide detection, there’s a lot of similarities. We use a lot of the same techniques and rely on a lot of the same approaches. Something I found very surprising when I started working on Law & Order is that in Canada, you don’t get to have a lawyer present when you’re being questioned. I’ve watched so much American television that I was like, “What? Really?” And I’m Canadian and have been writing cop shows for years! There are some strong legal distinctions between what our police are allowed to do versus what American police are allowed to do. That’s the thing that we try and make sure that we get right and is authentic to our country. But I would say that a lot of the methodology is the same in the two countries.

Kathleen Munroe mentioned to me that on screen, there’s less gun violence than on most U.S. crime shows, so there’s a lot less forensic searching for specific bullets. Is that true?

Well, there are much fewer guns in Canada, thank God. So, it’s true. But I would say probably in the original Law & Order: Criminal Intent, there was less shoot ’em up, bang, bang, gun action. In truth, it’s a more psychological franchise than it was even in the American version. But certainly, there’s less gun violence up here. I love a great forensic clue for sure, but I’m more interested in the psychology behind the people committing these crimes and why they’re doing them. I’m more interested in the why than in the bullets.

I quoted Kathleen and now I’ll go to Aden, who shared that he really likes the evolution of the series and he believes it gets better each season. Do you agree and how so?

In Law & Order, you’re not going home with these characters that much, but certainly in Seasons 2 and 3, we learn a lot more about our main characters and what makes them tick. We meet people from their lives and I think that that’s always really compelling for an actor to play, especially after a number of episodes that are very sort of straight ahead procedural. So to get to delve into their own lives and their own backstories is always really gratifying for actors.

Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, Wednesdays, 8/7c, The CW