From Deadline Hollywood

NBC Orders ‘Law & Order: Hate Crimes’ Series From Dick Wolf & Warren Leight

by Nellie Andreeva • tip
September 4, 2018 12:06pm

As Law & Order: SVU is heading into its record-tying 20th season, NBC is expanding the Law & Order franchise with a 13-episode order to Law & Order: Hate Crimes, from Law & Order boss Dick Wolf.

Co-created with one of Wolf’s top lieutenants, former Law & Order: SVU showrunner Warren Leight, the latest Law & Order installment is based on New York’s actual Hate Crimes Task Force …

The new Law & Order series will be introduced as a planted spinoff from SVU, with the first incarnation of the new unit appearing in the latter part of the upcoming season of the Mariska Hargitay-starring series.

This is the seventh Law & Order series, following mothership Law & Order, SVU, Criminal Intent, Trial By Jury, LA and last season’s anthology True Crime.

“As Law & Order: SVU enters its remarkable 20th season, it is exciting to get back into business with Dick Wolf on a new Law & Order incarnation that feels extremely timely,” said Lisa Katz, Co-President of Scripted Programming, NBC Entertainment. “Considering that last year there was a double-digit rise in hate crimes in our 10 largest cities — the highest total in over a decade — it seemed like this topic is begging to be explored.”

…. Law & Order: Hate Crimes is set in New York City, where crimes motivated by discrimination are vigorously investigated by an elite, specially trained team of investigators. Going behind the headlines and viral videos, these diverse, dedicated and passionate detectives will stop at nothing to bring these criminals to justice.

“As with all of my crime shows, I want to depict what’s really going on in our cities and shine a light on the wide-ranging victims and show that justice can prevail,” Wolf said. … That’s what I hope we can do with this new show in a world where hate crimes have reached an egregious level.”

Added Leight, “I’m extremely impressed by the actual men and women investigating these cases in a city as complicated and diverse as New York. The work they are doing puts them on the front lines in a battle for the soul of our city and nation. I’m thrilled about the chance to reunite with Dick and NBC to portray the reality of this crisis.”

… Wolf, 71, who has five drama series on the air (in addition to 3 cable docuseries) …

There have been multiple attempts by the broadcast networks to launch a series in the past few years about the workings of a hate crimes unit, including one that went to pilot at CBS last year, untitled Jenny Lumet drama.

Will Law & Order: Hate Crimes depict any Hate Hoaxes?

Here’s my elevator pitch for how L&O could take on the admittedly sensitive topic of Hate Hoaxes. My episode will be ripped from the headlines that so alarmed Matthew Yglesias, in which after the 2016 election, cactus-like swastikas were found within the seemingly secure Womyn’s Dorm at the New School for Social Research in Greenwich Village.

In my script, the well-heeled members of the Mashie-Niblick Club, a 62nd street men’s club for Upper East Side country club golfers, report finding Hammer & Sickle graffiti in their men’s locker room. “The locker room is supposed to be our Safe Space!” the captains of industry whine. They demand the arrest of a new illegal alien locker room attendant, a refugee fleeing Central American fascist death squads.

But detective Mariska Hargitay notes that the ineptly drawn Hammer & Sickle points not to the left like it should, but instead the arm and hammer lean to the the right. No True Marxist would draw that. In fact, the golfers’ Hammer & Sickle is drawn like a … Swastika.

This revelation leads the tall, handsome, but conscience-stricken chairman of the club, played by Armie Hammer, to make an emotional speech to his fellow members. Armie reveals how his own great-grandfather, oil tycoon Hamand Armor, had been blackballed from membership in this very Mashie-Niblick Club, despite being a celebrated plutocrat who had been edged out in the vote for the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize solely by the electoral machinations of the Dalai Lama, that bastard.

Armie explains that his great-grandfather was not let into this golf club of his dreams just because he was a Communist abortionist who had killed a woman through malpractice and then, after fleeing to the Soviet Union, had gotten rich as a friend of Lenin and Stalin, fencing for them property they had stolen from the Bolshevik state’s exiled and murdered Class Enemies.

This memory of discrimination against his great-grandfather arouses Armie’s conscience. “I’ve tried to pretend my blood is as corrupt as yours,” Armie thunders to the other members. “But one-eighth of me still hungers for … Justice!”

So Armie turns state’s evidence and reveals the workings of a neo-Nazi terrorist cell within the Mashie-Niblick Club led by club vice-chairman Beef Stanton (played by William Hurt), a notorious rightwing political advisor to President Rump. This Great White Defendant is sentenced to 20 years hard labor and the undocumented migrant he had conspired to frame is awarded his coveted Saturday morning tee time at Squashy Hollow Country Club.

In an emotional final scene, the board votes to induct posthumously into the Mashie-Niblick Club Armie’s long-blackballed great-grandfather. In the hall where distinguished late members of the club have their photos honored, Armie and Beef Stanton’s replacement as Vice Chairman, the undocumented worker, solemnly hang a picture of Armie’s great-grandfather: