Final Nights for New "Law & Order" Episodes on NBC-TV--

I was stunned when I read NBC-TV's long running series "LAW & ORDER" was cancelled from the upcoming fall season. It has hung around through cast changes and time changes over the years until I thought it could air another two or three years. Well, that was not to be.

I liked the set-up of the shows episodes split between the police detectives and the district attorneys' work on a case. And I liked the New York City sets. I became hooked on the show during the last season of the Briscoe/Curtis detective (with actors Jerry Orbach and Benjamin Bratt) era and hung in ever since. The procedural set-up won me over as good and life-like storytelling for TV crime fiction. Here's a pix of the current cast from Google.

I like the current cast and think they have done some good work. And yet, we have all favorites and my true favorite was during the Briscoe/Green detective (with actors Orbach and Jesse L. Martin) era. In any regard, I'm a bigger fan of watching the detective work for the set-up of the case although I do want to see how the case survives (and concludes) in court.

Thanks to various cable stations over the years, I've been able to see most shows going back the first episode and I have a greater appreciate for the entire body of work. Some stories stretch too hard for the famed "ripped from the headlines" theme of the show but I have found most "Law & Order" shows very watchable.

I'll miss it--or do you think 20 years was too long for this series?