An offhand idea turned into a pair of very good hours of television drama on NBC this week.
Last spring, after the network made its fall schedule announcement, the producers of "Law & Order" and "Homicide: Life on the Streets" were dining together in a New York restaurant with several NBC executives. And somebody came up with the idea of doing a crossover between the two series."We were all sitting around and talking about life and television," said Tom Fontana, "Homicide's" executive producer. "And I don't actually remember who had the idea."
"I think the waiter," interjected "Law & Order" executive producer Dick Wolfe.
At any rate, the producers and the network executives got themselves pretty excited about the idea.
"We all kind of (said), `Yeah! We'll do it! We'll do it!' " Fontana said. "And we all walked out of there thinking, `This is never going to happen.' "
But the producers of both shows got together some months later and again found themselves getting excited about the idea. The result - tonight's episode of "Law & Order" (9 p.m., Ch. 5) and Friday's episode of "Homicide" (9 p.m., Ch. 5) - is great TV.
The shows intermingle the case of a terrorist gassing on a New York City subway that kills 20 people. As the New York-based detectives of "Law & Order" investigates, the Baltimore-based detectives of "Homicide" notice a similarity between this incident and a similar gassing at a Baltimore church some years earlier.
Tonight, "Homicide's" Andre Braugher (Pembleton) and Kyle Secor (Bayliss) travel to New York to carry on their own investigation. And on Friday, "L&O's" Jerry Orbach (Briscoe), Benjamin Bratt (Curtis) and Jill Hennessy (Kincaid) travel to Baltimore to follow up on further developments in the case.
"I think we had some mutual admiration going between the shows as actors," Bratt said. "And it was an opportunity to get down there and have a good time, really."
"Also, it's another style of working," added Orbach. While "Law & Order" is shot in 35 millimeter and carefully staged, "Homicide" is shot in 16 millimeter and is much less carefully blocked out.
"It's kind of loose . . . and it's improvisational," Orbach said. "And there are a lot more personal things going on than we usually do on our show. So on a lot of levels it was a lot of fun for us."
There were a few personal things going on between the characters on the two shows. Pembleton and Curtis clash immediately. Bayliss develops a bit of a crush on Kincaid.
And Briscoe and Munch (Richard Belzer) discover that their pasts hold someone in common.
It's the kind of personal story that Orbach, for one, wouldn't mind doing a bit more of.
"It's a lot of fun," he said. "You know, it's like when (Christopher) Noth was leaving (the show) I said, `Can we have him die in my arms? I'll cry and get an Emmy nomination.
"We don't get to do that very much. I mean, we don't get to be that intense. Once in a while we slam somebody up against a wall, but that's about it."
Each episode can actually stand on its own, but the two mesh beautifully. Which is at least a minor miracle, considering that they were dealing with two different casts, two different crews, two different cities and two different styles.
The glue that held it all together was director Ed Sherin, a "Law & Order" producer who is also a frequent director of that show.
"And thank goodness he did, because nobody else could have made heads or tails of it because they shot the `Homicide' episode a month before the `Law & Order' episode," Wolfe said.
"Yeah, we were shooting it and going, `I hope this connects' because we were still working on (writing) the `Law & Order' at the time," Fontana said.
"And as actors, we had no idea what preceded the episode on `Homicide,' so we didn't necessarily know the specifics of the relationships between ourselves and the other characters," Bratt said. "We just sort of generalized and went from there.
"Maybe I shouldn't have told you that."
Still, there were times when this crossover seemed destined to succeed. Like when Hennessy was needed on the "Law & Order" set in New York at just about the same time she was needed on the "Homicide" set in Baltimore.
"In one shot in the courtroom - in a wide shot - it's actually Jill's twin sister," Fontana said. "And I thought . . . this truly has the hand of God on it because how often do you get a show where the one actor we need happens to have a twin sister?"
At any rate, the "Law & Order"-"Homicide" crossover is superior television that fans of both shows won't want to miss.
And if you're not a fan of either show, watching this week's episodes may turn you into one.