Law & Order: UK

For those Americans who have fallen through some wormhole and have never seen "Law & Order," the British version is as good a place to start as any--Walsh, Bamber and Agyeman in particular deliver fine performances. And those put off by the new "Law & Order: Los Angeles" or just jonesing for the good old days, will no doubt find a trip to London positively...brilliant.

UK remakes the script in its own, veddy British image and comes up with a vibrant, layered, insightful look at how the system breaks down no matter what the metropolis.

This is classic Law & Order through and through, where only the wigs worn in court and the accents are significantly different. The London environs evoke the urban New York feel, and the cast here is top-notch, refreshingly reintroducing us to the notion of a lead detective who's been around the block a few times.

The writing is as crisp as Brooks' perfect raincoat, and the partners share a father-son chemistry unseen elsewhere in the franchise, and anyone exhibiting the faintest traces of Anglophilia will delight to see the crown prosecutor and the defense counsel talking trash in the changing room while donning and doffing their barristers' wigs.

Aside from a few head-scratcher terms (GBH = "grievous bodily harm"), lawyers and judges wearing white wigs while in court (the judge in the premiere looks like she's got a poodle on her head) and occasionally impenetrable accents, Law & Order: UK should be remarkably familiar to fans of the original series.

Accents (and a few updates) aside, this is one exported L&O that plays as if it never left.

To viewers new to the franchise, L&O: UK might prove a fine introduction. For dedicated watchers of the original, it might function as a kind of recap of the "best of" episodes from the series' entire life. But for the truly addicted, it will always be a paler, politer, well-bred echo of the Real Thing, better left on the side of the Atlantic where it originated.