Law & Order, the original, AKA Mother Ship, uber producer Dick Wolf’s first and best series that birthed an entire genre and hundreds of spinoff and copycats, is FINALLY available to stream. It may seem strange that I’m so excited about this, but, trust me, this is news.
Two years ago, when I wanted to compile a list of my Top 10 favorite Law & Order episodes from the show’s first 20 seasons in honor of it returning for a new season in 2022 after 
having been off the air for twelve years, I thought it would be easy to quickly blitz through the seasons to find the episodes I liked best, as I assumed it was streaming SOMEWHERE. I mean, after all, every time I turn on the TV, it’s airing on some channel. BBC America, Sundance, WETV, and Pop all have the show on heavy rotation. And that’s, of course, in addition to the new episodes airing on NBC.
Because Law & Order is an NBC staple, I assumed all seasons would be on Peacock, but I was sorely mistaken. It turns out, only the later seasons were on Peacock. If I wanted to re-watch any episode prior to season 15, I was out of luck. So what did I do? I literally set my DVR to record every episode that aired on every channel to catch all the earlier episodes, so I could cull through all the older episodes. Yes, it took a lot of time and a really large DVR capacity to finally put together my list, and it was a huge ordeal.
But now, just a scant two years later, the world is a MUCH better place. As of TODAY, December 16, 2024, every episode of the original run of Law & Order—all 20 seasons, every one of the 456 episodes—are now available to stream on Hulu. And there is much celebrating.
It is something that is long overdue. Law & Order is, by far, one of the most influential shows ever to grace the small screen, and still the best procedural cop show ever made. If you think all Law & Orders are the same, and you’ve only seen Law & Order: Special Victims Unit or another spinoff, you have not seen the original. There is nothing like the original. And now you have no excuses not to bask in the glory that is Law & Order, the show that gave every New York theater actor their SAG card and taught me everything I ever need to know about the Big Apple (I know it’s very dangerous to attend Hudson University, for one thing).
So do yourself a favor, and go to Hulu and spend a day or a month settling in with Briscoe and Curtis, Lt. Van Buren, Jack McCoy and all the other fantastic characters who came and went during 20 incredible seasons of Law & Order, which ran from 1990 to 2010.
And as for that Top 10 episodes list I compiled? You can check it out here. And now you can check out each episode yourself and let me know what you think and compile a list of your own. Thank you, Hulu. Thank you for telling the stories.