17 Dick Wolf TV Shows That Flopped
You know the TV business is a hard one when even a producer like Dick Wolf, the creator of the United States’ longest-running primetime live-action series and the mastermind behind three current TV universes, has as many misses on his track record as he does.
Yes, for all his success — especially with NBC’s Law & Order and Chicago franchises and CBS’s FBI shows — Wolf has also had his share of failure. Case in point: Law & Order: LA, which began its brief run 15 years ago, on September 29, 2010, and ended shortly thereafter.
Check out those disappointments below — all of which are TV shows Wolf created or co-created, none of which lasted long.
Gideon Oliver
The bad news is this 1989 ABC mystery series — featuring Lou Gossett Jr. as a crime-solving anthropology professor — only lasted five episodes. The good news is it gave exposure to guest stars like Cynthia Nixon, Eriq La Salle, and Melissa Leo.
Christine Cromwell
Jaclyn Smith of Charlie’s Angels fame played a lawyer who “specializes in the crime styles of the rich and famous” in this 1989 production, another show in the ABC Mystery Movie rotation. It fared even worse than Gideon Oliver, however, only airing four episodes.
Nasty Boys
Before Wolf recruited Benjamin Bratt for Law & Order, he cast the actor in both the 1989 TV movie Nasty Boys and its 1990 continuation series. The story, which Wolf conceived with David Black, followed an undercover North Las Vegas police unit.
H.E.L.P.
The organization of this 1990 show’s title was the Harlem Eastside Lifesaving Program, a combined unit of firefighters, cops, and paramedics, making this show — which Wolf co-created with Black and Christopher Crowe. But ABC helped H.E.L.P. to the exit after just six episodes.
Mann & Machine
Alongside Bob DeLaurentis, Wolf created this sci-fi cop drama starring David Andrews and Yancy Butler as a detective duo — one human, one robotic — solving cases in the future. NBC canceled the show after a handful of episodes in 1992, but cast member S. Epatha Merkerson found refuge on Law & Order.
South Beach
After Mann & Machine, Wolf, DeLaurentis, and Butler all worked together on this short-lived 1993 NBC series about ex-cons staying on the government’s good side by taking down bad guys. (Fun fact for fans of 90s alt-rock: Eagle-Eye Cherry had a supporting role on the show.)
Crime & Punishment
A brief addition to NBC’s “Best Night of Television on Television” Thursday-night lineup, 1993’s Crime & Punishment followed LAPD officers… as did an off-screen interrogator who got the characters to externalize their inner monologue. At least South Beach alum John Glover got an Emmy nomination for his guest stint.
The Wright Verdicts
In this 1995 CBS misfire, Tom Conti played Charles Wright, an Englishman practicing law in NYC, with Margaret Colin as an ex-NYPD private eye and Aida Turturro as Wright’s secretary. Unlike other legal dramas of Wolf’s, The Wright Verdicts focused on a defense attorney.
Swift Justice
This UPN show, which lasted for 13 episodes in 1996, followed Navy SEAL-turned-NYPD detective-turned private detective Mac Swift (James McCaffrey). Jennifer Garner, J.K. Simmons, and future SVU star Ice-T all booked guest gigs on the show.
Feds
This CBS production about staffers at a federal prosecutor’s office in New York City eked out six episodes in 1997 before getting the ax. It was a novelty for airing in a letterboxed 16:9 aspect ratio… and, in retrospect, for starring a brown-haired John Slattery.
Players
Wolf collaborated with Shaun Cassidy, Reggie Rock Blythewood, and Ice-T to create this 1997 NBC about con-artists convicts who make good by helping out the FBI. (Kind of a South Beachretread, no?) But NBC only played the game for one season.
Deadline
In 2000, Wolf started the new millennium with a short-lived NBC drama starring Oliver Platt, future Chicago Med star, as a newspaper journalist for the tabloid Deadline. (You might recognize that fictional tabloid from the Law & Order universe.)
Dragnet
Wolf rebooted the 1950s police procedural with a new version on ABC in 2003. Ed O’Neill played the new Joe Friday, while Ethan Embry, Eva Longoria, and Christina Chang played other LAPD investigators. In a drag for the TV producer, though, the new Dragnet only made it one and a half seasons.
Law & Order: Trial by Jury
This Law & Order spinoff put the focus on courtroom proceedings rather than cop activities. (Think more law, less order.) NBC spent only about two months of 2005 airing Trial by Jury’s one and one season, though, and the show’s cancellation “extraordinarily upsetting,” Wolf told the Associated Press.
Conviction
After Trial by Jury’s downfall, Wolf & Co. reused that show’s sets for the 2006 legal drama Conviction, a Law & Order spinoff that featured Stephanie March reprising her L&O role as Alexandra Cabot. But Conviction suffered the same fate, getting the boot after just one season.
Law & Order: LA
In 2010, Wolf made another stab at a Law & Order spinoff, creating a Los Angeles-set offshoot that boasted the talents of Corey Stoll, Skeet Ulrich, Terrence Howard, and Regina Hall. It only lasted 22 episodes, though, and it wasn’t even the last one-season show of Wolf’s on NBC.
Chicago Justice
The fourth and most recent One Chicago entry — a legal drama set in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office — aired for just a single 13-episode season. “It seemed like Justice was the most conventional, it was the closest to a Law & Order show, so we thought maybe this is the one we should sacrifice,” Bob Greenblatt, NBC’s then-chairperson, explained after the cancellation.
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