Reporting from New York — On a Manhattan sound stage masquerading as a Rikers Island interrogation room, Mariska Hargitay acted out a tense scene as Lt. Olivia Benson, the tough yet compassionate protagonist of NBC’s hit procedural “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
“I believed you when you said all the empowerment and all the strength that you were looking for is inside of you,” she tells Lilah, a 30-ish willowy blond inmate played by Sarah Carter. Lilah, who has been charged with carrying out a murder at the behest of a manipulative guru, is resisting a plea deal.
“If you’re lucky you can get out of here by the time you’re 50,” says Benson. “And believe me,” she adds, her warm eyes narrowing as her voice softens to a whisper, “That’s a lot of life.”
The scene is part of an upcoming episode of “SVU” inspired by the cult-like NXIVM organization, yet another example of the topical subject matter tackled by the series that fans often refer to as just “SVU” that illustrates what’s made the crime show one of broadcast television’s most enduring success stories. And as it kicks off its 20th season Sept. 27, it is marking a milestone, tying “Gunsmoke” and the original “Law & Order” as the longest-running prime-time drama in broadcast history.
In its advanced age, the drama remains as culturally relevant as it’s ever been. Despite — or perhaps because of — its pulpy entertainment value, the series has helped shift the conversation around sexual assault and deliver weekly lessons about consent to a generation of viewers.
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As creator Dick Wolf put it, “We’ve been doing #MeToo for 20 years.”
To date, 434 episodes of the series have aired, enough TV to fuel a 13-day binge-watching session — without ads. Excessive? Maybe, though anyone who’s fallen under the spell of an “SVU” marathon on cable, where reruns are nearly ubiquitous, can attest to its compulsive watchability. To hear that signature “dun-dun” — or “chung-chung,” depending on who you ask — is to be instantly hooked. In the 2017-18 TV season, viewers spent 135 billion minutes watching “SVU” on NBC, USA and Ion, according to NBC.
Not even Wolf, who will have five shows on broadcast TV this fall and is developing another “Law & Order” spinoff about hate crimes, is immune. “I’m perfectly happy the four days a week there are marathons running, because I just turn it on and leave it on,” he said by phone from Chicago.
TIMELINE: ‘Law & Order: SVU’ turns 20: A look back at drama’s many on and offscreen changes »
Hargitay has been the anchor and rock of the series since its start. Two decades ago, her agent sent her the script for the pilot of a series called simply “Sex Crimes” with a major disclaimer: It was pretty dark.
Soon retitled to the more advertiser-friendly “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” the series opened with a bang: On a rainy night in New York, a cabbie is found dead, his genitals mutilated. A twisty investigation eventually reveals the driver was actually a Serbian war criminal, murdered in an act of vengeance by two of the women he raped. Benson is unusually sympathetic to the victims because, we learn, she was conceived by rape.
“It was bold, it was brave, it was unchartered territory, it was this incredible female character with this back story that made perfect sense,” Hargitay recalled during an impassioned conversation in her sprawling dressing room at “SVU’s” production offices. “I remember reading it and having chills and going, this is it.”
Peter Scanavino as Dominick “Sonny” Carisi, left, Mariska Hargitay as Sgt. Olivia Benson, Scott Williams as Det. “Doom,” Caris Vujec as Det. Campesi in “Community Policing.”
Peter Scanavino as Dominick “Sonny” Carisi, left, Mariska Hargitay as Sgt. Olivia Benson, Scott Williams as Det. “Doom,” Caris Vujec as Det. Campesi in “Community Policing.” (Michael Parmelee / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
When Wolf began pitching the series in the late ’90s, the original “Law & Order” was a well-established hit, but his idea for a procedural about sex crimes was met with skepticism by Warren Littlefield, then entertainment president of NBC, who asked, “Are there enough of them for a series?”
Turns out there are — and then some. Over the years, “SVU” has never lacked for real-life inspiration, riffing on high-profile abuse cases and sex scandals from young kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard to Chappaquiddick. The only off-limits subject is teen suicide, because of the “link between movies and TV shows that feature teen suicide and a spike in the rates,” said Wolf.
While never a ratings blockbuster on the order of “NCIS” and other CBS procedurals, “SVU” has been a ste
