Fans of the six shows of the One Chicago and Law & Order franchise got some very good news this week with the renewals for the 2023-2024 TV season. At the time of the renewals, details were few and far between other than Law & Order: Organized Crime reportedly getting fewer episodes than the other two Law & Order shows. Now, however, it seems like viewers will see less of their favorite characters next season.
Although Wolf Entertainment’s Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, and Organized Crime are hits for NBC, Deadline reports that the renewals for the 2023-2024 TV season were accompanied by an arrangement that cast members will appear in fewer episodes. The reasoning is said to be budgetary between NBC, Universal Television, and Wolf Entertainment, with renegotiations ongoing for the guaranteed number of episodes for series regulars.
Cutting the number of episodes for stars means reducing the cost of the new season without cutting their episodic fees. They’ll make less money on the whole, but were not asked to make less per episode, which is reportedly not the case for CBS shows Blue Bloods (which was late to get the Season 14 renewal) and Bob Hearts Abishola.
The total number of episodes for five of the six Wolf Entertainment shows on NBC (with Organized Crime as the exception) is presumably the usual 22 episodes. With the new cuts, stars will reportedly only appear in 18-20 of them, although exceptions are not ruled out for SVU's Mariska Hargitay and possibly others. Organized Crime evidently has not been impacted by the cuts to the total number of episodes for stars, which presumably means Christopher Meloni and other returning regulars will appear in all 13.
At this point, fans can really only speculate about which stars might still appear in more than 18-20 episodes and how the shows can handle such a change. The good news for the three shows of One Chicago is that they already juggle stories between ensembles, and stars already don’t appear on a weekly basis. Taylor Kinney has already been absent for several episodes of Chicago Fire this season, and he’s the top-billed star on that show since Jesse Spencer's departure as series regular!
Although the L&O shows have a different format than those set in the Windy City, SVU has also not featured all the main stars on a weekly basis in the current Season 24, with Ice-T and Peter Scanavino notably being absent from episodes, with the focus shifting toward newcomers. The original Law & Order already has more than one detective and more than one ADA, so it might not be too complicated to accommodate the cuts there. As long as there's at least one cop and one lawyer?
On the whole, I’d say the most challenging L&O show to cut characters from 2-4 episodes per season would be the more serialized Organized Crime, which is seemingly being spared the changes anyway. On the One Chicago side, I’d say that Chicago P.D.’s smaller and more focused ensemble would be the larger challenge over Fire and Med, but not impossible due to the episodes usually centering on one or two mains already. The news comes not too long after P.D. hit its 200-episode milestone, without Jesse Lee Soffer’s Jay Halstead. (Soffer did open up about the show hitting 200 episodes.)
At the time of writing, there is no word as to whether the casts of the FBI shows over on CBS (which share a Wolf Entertainment TV universe with the Law & Order and One Chicago shows) are experiencing similar cuts. Notably, FBI, FBI: Most Wanted, and FBI: International received two-season renewals last spring to guarantee them for the 2023-2024 TV season.
It’s possible that the upcoming season finales on NBC will shed light on how the shows set up characters for less screentime in the fall, but only time will tell on that front. SVU may have already dropped hints about Benson’s future, while the future doesn’t look too bright for Ruzek over on Chicago P.D. and a crisis could be on the way for Stella on Chicago Fire.
Unfortunately, all six shows are currently on a brief break, with Law & Order, SVU, and Organized Crime not returning with new episodes until Thursday, April 27 starting at 8 p.m. ET, and Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, and Chicago P.D. returning on Wednesday, May 3 starting at 8 p.m. ET, all on NBC. You can find past episode of all six series streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription in the meantime.
