Dick Wolf has created some of the most successful and longest-running TV franchises in history, so it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the producer of series like Law & Order would jump to Netflix eventually.
Wolf, along with his Wolf Entertainment, has teamed up with Alfred Street Industries (the company behind shows like Netflix’s Is It Cake? and Sparking Joy with Marie Kondo) to launch two new true-crime Netflix docuseries this year — Homicide: New York and Homicide: Los Angeles. The idea is that each five-episode series will “illuminate the stories of notorious murder cases as told by the people who know them best: The detectives and prosecutors who cracked them.”
Homicide: New York will premiere later this month, on March 20, while the Los Angeles series is coming at an unspecified date later this year.
Separate from the content of the new series, Wolf’s partnership with Netflix is noteworthy enough in and of itself because of his track record — and the fact that these will mark the first streaming productions he’s brought to fruition. Wolf also has a cop drama in the works at Amazon, and he’s tried unsuccessfully to develop projects for Peacock, which is why it’s looking like these Netflix series will be his first for a streamer that actually make it across the finish line.
Launching his Netflix partnership with true-crime docuseries also certainly makes sense, given that he’s the producer behind hit crime dramas like Law & Order as well as its spinoffs, including Law & Order: SVU.
True crime, meanwhile, is definitely having a moment on Netflix right now, with the genre currently dominating the streamer in the US. One of its biggest shows at the moment is American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders, a four-episode look at the death of an investigative journalist who was tracking a political conspiracy (and which is #2 on Netflix in the US as of this writing). Some of the biggest and buzziest Netflix releases over the past year likewise featured true crime stories, including everything from Take Care of Maya to Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.
Check out a trailer for Wolf’s Homicide: New York below:
