Among monster boxes this one takes the prize: 104 DVD discs, holding twenty years of a series that’s been in constant TV rotation for (cough) 35 years. They’re all here — Jerry Orbach, Sam Waterston, S. Epatha Merkerson and Benjamin Bratt. I imagine this is prime gift box bait, and an opportunity for casual fans to experience it all in its proper order, without commercials. Is it a worthy purchase?  Pre-sold readers can go straight to the review’s evaluation section. With all of his TV residuals, I wish Mr. Wolf would act on the letters I send asking that he adopt me.

Law & Order the Complete Original Series
DVD
Universal Home Video
1990-2010 / Color / 1:78 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / 20718 min. / Street Date December 2, 2025 / Available from / 199.99
Starring: George Dzundza, Michael Moriarty, Steven Hill, Carolyn McCormick, Jerry Orbach, S. Epatha Merkerson, Jill Hennessy, Sam Waterston, Benjamin Bratt, Carey Lowell, Jesse L. Martin, Angie Harmon, Dianne Wiest, Elisabeth Röhm, Fred Dalton Thompson, Dennis Farina.
Main Theme: Mike Post
Showrunners: Walon Green, Michael S. Chernuchin, René Balcer, William M. Finkelstein, Arthur Penn, Barry Schindel, Nicholas Wootton
Created by Dick Wolf
Directors of more than 20 episodes: Constantine Makris, Edwin Sherin, Jace Alexander, David Platt, Richard Dobbs, Matthew Penn.

Law & Order must be one of the most successful cop shows of all time, if one is talking about the number of episodes and years on the air. The concept stayed fresh because it alternates between police procedure on the street and the courtroom dramas that follow. Most shows break down into even halves … somewhere around the 25 minute mark, the two lead detectives will make a show of cuffing a perpetrator identified as the killer. It’s a prime example of a New York-based show that obviously had a lot of cooperation for shooting. They did re-use a couple of streets many times, simply because those locations were less disruptive to traffic. If the show ever retreated to a studio set for a New York exterior, it fooled us entirely. The actors playing detectives must have been like friendly neighbors to the denizens of downtown Manhattan. Is it Tuesday?  They’ll be filming on the courthouse steps!

Although a newer series reprise already has a few seasons under its belt, the main show enjoyed a cool 20 year stint that straddled the millennium. That means that it starts out without cell phones or the Internet, or 9-11 or the War on Terror or a hundred other modern complications. It’s quite a show to get hooked on, catching up with weekly syndicated TV cablecasts.

We’ve seen the show piecemeal for years on these cable re-runs, banking 30 or 40 episodes at a time and watching them whenever we were caught up on our streaming shows. L&O had a consistent quality from the outset, and its writing maintained a high caliber. It started with an adult attitude toward the characters, hard workers trying to do difficult jobs and maintain an after-hours life. They didn’t broadcast their personal problems. On the ‘Law’ side, the unsinkable S. Epatha Merkerson started four seasons in and never left; besides keeping her detectives in line, she spent many episodes mulling over health issues and battling the system for career advancement that seemed forever deferred.

Dick Wolf and his producers found a happy succession of actor-personalities to play the 7 or 8 main ensemble leads. Detective George Dzunda put in one year before being replaced by Paul Sorvino, who gave way to Jerry Orbach, whose wisecracks became a fixture for a full 11 seasons. Orbach had been in crime shows from the beginning; his most impressive feature work was in Woody Allen’s  Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The producers found talented new faces to play the junior detectives. Chris Noth put in five years followed by Benjamin Bratt (4) and then Jesse L. Martin (8) and Anthony Anderson (3). All four played well in conjunction with Orbach. Succeeding Senior detectives were Dennis Farina and Jeremy Sisto, supervising new blood.

The DAs tended to be acting veterans. The great Steven Hill carried the first full ten years, fighting city hall, going through elections and worrying about his wife. Future presidential candidate Fred Thompson was the prime DA for four years. The initial Executive Assistant DA was the star Michael Moriarty, who held the fort for the first four seasons. Later on came Linus Roache (2 years).

The series’ most prominent star Sam Waterston began as Executive Assistant DA Jack McCoy. He stuck his neck out on principle, and almost got canned in a scandal or two. McCoy eventually took over the DA role … with a tenure that lasted to the end of the main series run, and continued in the later re-boot (not part of this set). A fine actor, Waterston excelled in a wide range of film work, usually on the liberal side of issues. His ‘serious’ high points included  The Killing Fields but he was hilarious in  Rancho Deluxe and  Hopscotch. He needed a mustache to twirl in  Heaven’s Gate; we recommend re-seeing the Redford-Farrow  The Great Gatsby, as Waterston’s ‘observer’ role is a gem of understatement.

Sam Waterston’s Jack McCoy carries the show’s liberal flag, but his character is far from infallible. His DAs frequently shared their low opinion of his vision for justice. Being liberal at basis, the show frequently took on hot-button issues but never found facile solutions. Plenty of cases finished with painfully unfair verdicts. The outcomes could be ironic, but never merely clever.

The first assistant DA was Richard Brooks (3 years) but the slot then shifted toward women — Elizabeth Röhm (4 years), Alana De La Garza (5 years), Angie Harmon (3 years), Jill Hennessey (6 years) and Carey Lowell (7 years). Ms Lowell is to be commended for so neatly overcoming the stigma attached to former ‘Bond Girls.’

Plenty of detectives and ADAs filled in the gaps; Dianne Wiest served as an interim DA for three years, quite admirably. The turnover factor could be rough, as characters we ‘knew personally’ were transferred out or promoted, or just quit for personal reasons. The replacements were so good that after a while keeping everybody straight wasn’t easy. We remember only one shock killing of a main character — in an impressive episode that also broke with the series’ format. It’s still considered the highest-rated episode: Aftershock season 6 ep. 23.

The seeming thousands of guest actors form quite a parade of talent. The first episode broadcast featured a cast that included future stars from shows like The West Wing and NCIS. Many actors played multiple characters in different episodes. S. Epatha Merkerson, for instance, played a supporting part before winning her long-running role as Detective Lieutenant Anita Van Buren. We personally never followed the swarm of Law & Order spin-off shows. Law & Order Special Victims Unit always came off as more exploitative and unpleasant. Mariska Hargitay was good, of course, and the show is still running after a full 27 seasons.

When a show goes on forever, we of course become very aware of permanent patterns it forms in our heads. The standard format for Law & Order arranged for each opening to introduce characters that may have only a few seconds of screen time …. just long enough to discover a body. We’re grateful that they didn’t assign those roles to guest stars, the way celebrities used to turn up in episodes of Batman.

Universal Home Video’s DVD of Law & Order the Complete Original Series is a happy surprise. We normally hold out for Blu-ray releases of favorite shows, but L&O’s twenty seasons make that impractical. We’ve purchased TV series on disc and mostly liked what we’ve gotten, but every once and awhile the quality or formatting let us down. We don’t expect a DVD to look like a 4K stream of a new program, but it can’t be an old grainy mess, either.

The new is good for L&H … the video masters look fine. The DVD Standard Def images hold up very well on our 65-inch set, bettering the windowboxed-flat renderings that show up on some cable channels. Contrast is good throughout. The absence of commercials is of course a big plus. Everything is covered with good removable English subtitles. The box with its 20 keep cases weighs 13 pounds.

We sampled 14 shows across through the timeline and were pleased with what we saw. Online stats at Amazon, etc. describe the collection as being formatted in 1:33 flat, but the series makes the changeover to widescreen in season 5. Since that’s about 1995, we speculate that the networks were anticipating the format shift to widescreen years before it occurred.  [It’s strange — we can tell you exactly when old film formats arrived, but have no such recall for major format changeovers in recent history for TV, computers, phones, etc.]

Popping through the keep cases, we looked for the extras noted below. There appears to be no overall guide, so we’ll know when deleted scenes show up only when we pop in that particular disc. The keep cases do list several crossover episodes where characters from Law & Order appear in other series in the franchise. Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson character started on Law & Order SVU in 1999, but appeared on the main franchise show in season 10 and 16.

Having watched episodes mostly at random for at least a decade, and using many for late-night sleep aids, we’re going to try watching the whole series in episode order. I see that that’s 104 discs and some where between 450 and 500 episodes. See you in 2031, maybe.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Law & Order the Complete Original Series
DVD rates:
TV shows: Excellent
Video: Very Good ++
Sound: Very Good
Supplements:
Deleted and Extended Scenes
Cast Profiles
Set Tour
Crossover Episodes.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: 104 DVD discs in 20 Keep cases in Card box
Reviewed: December 18, 2025
(7440law)

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