UK version of Law & Order disappoints
LAW AND ORDER is one of the longest running series on our televisions and one of my own personal favourites.
So I waited with excited anticipation to the UK version of this popular crime drama but boy was I disappointed.
It airs on UTV on Wednesday nights and stars Bradley Walsh (ex-Coronation Street), who tries too hard to be a mix of Frost and Colombo but it so doesn’t work.
Even the pace of Law & Order UK isn’t the same as the US one which is New York based. It appears to be the same programme but it isn’t.
Though this is based in London, there is no sense of a metropolitian location. It is almost as small-time as Midsomer Murders.
Over the years the US series has had a few cast changes – I used to traumatised every time. I thought it was never going to be the same after Chris Noth (Sex and the City and currently in The Good Wife) left but I got used to the new crews as they came and went. That’s because the storylines were good.
Now, the storyline in the UK episode I saw last Wednesday wasn’t bad as storylines go but there was something stilted about the gowned and wigged barristers in the court room scenes and Bradley wearing the mac threw me off completely.
Even his mannerisms, the way he half turned and the way he crouched was a nod to Columbo.
The pity of it is that there was probably no need for him to do this. I liked him very much in Corrie.
And it works the other way around too. The American versions of The Office and Shameless were awful. I couldn’t even look at them.
It was chalk and cheese and maybe Law & Order only works when it’s based in the Big Apple.
Of course, cops in the States can carry guns and maybe that takes the edge off the British cops and gives a tamer tone to the UK series.
The upside is that it’s one less series I have to commit to and as the evenings get longer and brighter, that’s not a bad thing.