Law & Order‘s hate crimes spinoff could end up on a streaming service due to language concerns. Back in 2018, the tentatively titled Law & Order: Hate Crimes was given a 13-episode order by NBC. But recently, news about the show has centered on where it will live online. Special Victims Unit showrunner Warren Leight told THR’s Top 5 Podcast that the offshoot could be headed to Peacock, NBCUniversal’s highly-touted streaming service. A lot of the concerns surrounding Hate Crimes revolve around the language necessary for such a show to exist. Standards and Practices just wouldn’t allow a network drama to repeat the sorts of things that occur in real hate crime investigations and Leight understands that.
“I think it was perceived to be a better fit with Peacock. The vocabulary people use when they commit hate crimes is not acceptable on network television, and that’s an interesting consideration,” he began. “I think [Hate Crimes] is a show that needs to be made. Where it dovetails with SVU, it’s about the toll a hate crime takes on a victim, a victim’s family, and a community. It’s an arena I think needs to be written about. I’d like to see this show go [forward].
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Other comments from that conversation center around an upcoming episode of SVU that will focus on George Floyd’s death and police brutality.
“There are ways, we will find our way in to tell the story. Presumably, our cops will still be trying to do the right thing but it’s going to be harder for them and they’re going to understand why it’s hard for them,” Leight explained.
Leight also mentioned that they’ve “tried really hard in the last year to show how class and race affect the outcomes of justice in society, but I’m beginning to suspect ‘really hard’ wasn’t enough. This has to be a moment where people make themselves uncomfortable, where people in power have to make themselves uncomfortable.”
He continued to talk about how the show has approached these problems in the past, “[he] can’t make every episode about a bad cop.” while adding, “Olivia makes mistakes…but she’s empathic, which is I think what separates the cops on our television show from a lot of what we’re seeing these days on our livestreams…I’ve been made uncomfortable by a number of shows that glorify the use of violence in interrogation or the use of threat… We’re going to reflect New York in the pandemic. What happens to someone who is sexually assaulted during the height of the coronavirus outbreak.”
Would you be interested in this Law & Order spinoff? Let us know in the comments!
