Born in New York in 1946, Dick Wolf began his career as an advertising writer. His big dream was to become a screenwriter and he also occupied himself with this in his spare time. His first movie was 1978's Skateboard and more movies followed. In 1985 he became part of the writing team of the police series Hill Street Blues. The episode What Are Friends For written by Wolf was nominated for an Emmy Award. After one season he retired from this series and between 1986 and 1988 he was a writer and producer for Miami Vice. In the late eighties he wrote a number of television films for ABC and made Nasty Boys and H.E.L.P., two series that were both short-lived.
Wolf's big breakthrough came in 1990 with the huge hit Law & Order on NBC. It shows how the New York courts and police departments work together to put criminals behind bars. The series had consistently high ratings and won several major television awards. The series initially ended in 2010, but made a new start in 2022. The series was so successful that a movie followed in 1998 and the first spin-off came in 1999: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
This marked the start of many more spin-offs, including Law & Order: Los Angeles, Law & Order: UK and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. This was also the beginning of several crossovers between the different series. It slowly grew into an entire franchise. Even after the original series ended, the universe was alive and well. More than 1200 episodes have been made in the past 33 years. Currently ongoing are the original series, Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Organized Crime.
Even in his Law & Order time, Dick Wolf was not idle on other projects. He made several other series, but none of them could measure up to the beast that Law & Order had become. Most series he made in the nineties were stopped after one season. His biggest success of that time (besides Law & Order) was New York Undercover, which ran at Fox between 1994 and 1998.
When the original Law & Order disappeared from the tube, Wolf started working on a new series of television series. This time it was about the public services of Chicago and in 2012 NBC kicked off with the firefighters from Chicago Fire. Two years later, the police came into play in Chicago PD and in 2015 it was the doctors' turn at Chicago Med. These three series are still running at the moment and the crossovers are rampant. There are even crossovers between the Chicago series and Law & Order! Unfortunately, a fourth Chicago series, 2017's Chicago Justice, was less of a success and was canceled after only one season.
Wolf's third major television universe began on CBS in 2018. This time, FBI federal agents were being followed. In 2020, the first spin-off FBI: Most Wanted was broadcast, in which only the most dangerous criminals are caught. FBI: International followed a year later, in which an FBI team eliminates threats from outside the American borders. Despite the fact that some reviewers of MySeries are not very charmed by it, these series are a great success and on April 4 there will be a real crossover of the three series in America!
