Personally, 'Law and Order SVU' is a lot better than the original
'Law and Order'. Instead of spending half of the show with cops and the second half with Attorneys, SVU spends all 40 minutes focusing on the special victims unit, made up of Elliot Stabler (Chris Meloni),
Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), John Munch (Richard Belzer), and Captain Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), who you may have seen in early seasons of the original 'Law and Order'. This season contains 22 episodes, most as good as each other, also featuring a cliff-hanger finale, this season is well worth your money.

This is one of the best TV shows and one of the best crime series ever. With excellent quality of writing, great dialogue, excellent casting (Dan Florek, Christopher Meloni, Richard Belzer and Mariska Hargitay are excellent), great acting - this is a major achievement. One warning however - this is a show about sex crimes, often involving children, so it is VERY schocking and very dark.

This is one hell of a series, riveting! The actors deliver some class acting, the stories are all different and as good as each other. I highly recommend this series to anyone whos wants a great police series.

I started to watch Law & Order SVU when I visited Canada 4 years ago. My cousin had told me about the series and well I was hooked from day one. The storylines are at times, disturbing, but a true indication of what life is like on some of our streets in todays society. You grow to have a fuller understanding and admiration for the actual people that work in the real SVU teams. The characters are absolutely brilliant, and Olivia and Elliott lead the cast in every single season! Most of the characters from this season are in the other seasons apart from 1, and the team is as strong in this first series as they are today! I thought it would be difficult going back in time, but season 1 hits off with a BANG and you see why this show has succeeded and why it is rated, justifiably the full 5 stars. How Dick Woolf manages to keep on getting these gritty storylines is beyond my imagination. I am usually a season ahead as I get them straight from Canada having been shown there first, and Dick Woolf has also created a Law & Order Trial by Jury. Unfortunately, after season 1 this show has been cancelled - and in my opinion too soon.
Law & Order SVU is absolutely brilliant and you begin to bond with and love all the characters. You need to have this one on your shelves for the collection. A collection would just not be a collection or complete without it!

I started to watch this series on UK television this year. There was a huge advertising campaign and it worked on me - I sat down and watched the first episode.. and well I was hooked. I do not believe I have ever seen such a compelling series as this. As a Brit I am a huge fan of US drama series - I thought that ER would never be beaten for exhausting gritty realism - but I think I have found its equal. A bold and brave series it concentrates on the darker side of crime fighting - that of sex crimes. It required superior story lines and acting to get this series of the ground and running. Once again this debut series had both elements in abundance. The whole cast are excellent especially Hargitay and Meloni who bring a huge aray of emotions to the screen without excessive sentimentality. All the actors play vunerable characters - but their dedication and compassion to their work brings a sense of balance between the terrible crimes they investigate and the people they try to protect. Amazingly there is also a wonderful brand of humour which runs through the episodes which lightens the mood and adds further dimension to the characters and storylines. I am delighted that the first series has finally been brought out on DVD. It deserves to be seen, so do.