Law & Order, the original, AKA Mother Ship, uber producer Dick Wolf’s first and best series that birthed an entire genre and hundreds of spinoff and copycats, is FINALLY available to stream. It may seem strange that I’m so excited about this, but, trust me, this is news.
Two years ago, when I wanted to compile a list of my Top 10 favorite Law & Order episodes from the show’s first 20 seasons in honor of it returning for a new season in 2022 after having been off the air for twelve years, I thought it would be easy to quickly blitz through the seasons to find the episodes I liked best, as I assumed it was streaming SOMEWHERE. I mean, after all, every time I turn on the TV, it’s airing on some channel. BBC America, Sundance, WETV, and Pop all have the show on heavy rotation. And that’s, of course, in addition to the new episodes airing on NBC.
Because Law & Order is an NBC staple, I assumed all seasons would be on Peacock, but I was sorely mistaken. It turns out, only the later seasons were on Peacock. If I wanted to re-watch any episode prior to season 15, I was out of luck. So what did I do? I literally set my DVR to record every episode that aired on every channel to catch all the earlier episodes, so I could cull through all the older episodes. Yes, it took a lot of time and a really large DVR capacity to finally put together my list, and it was a huge ordeal.
But now, just a scant two years later, the world is a MUCH better place. As of TODAY, December 16, 2024, every episode of the original run of Law & Order—all 20 seasons, every one of the 456 episodes—are now available to stream on Hulu. And there is much celebrating.