Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the first spinoff of Law & Order, is an American police procedural television series that focuses on crimes of sexual nature. While the victim is often murdered, this is not always the case, and victims often play prominent roles in episodes. The series frequently uses stories that are “ripped from the headlines” or based on real crimes. Such episodes take a real crime and fictionalize it by changing the details. The series premiered on NBC on September 20, 1999, and its twenty-second season premiered on November 12, 2020.
Based out of the New York City Police Department’s 16th precinct in Manhattan, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit delves into the dark side of the New York underworld as the detectives of a new elite force, the Special Victims Unit (SVU for short), investigate and prosecute various sexually oriented crimes including rape, paedophilia, and domestic violence. They also investigate the abuses of children, the disabled and elderly victims of non-sexual crimes who require specialist handling, all while trying to balance the effects of the investigation on their own lives as they try not to let the dark side of these crimes affect them.
The series has received ninety-one award nominations, winning thirty-three awards. Mariska Hargitay was the first regular cast member on any Law & Order series to win an Emmy Award when she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2006.
As of December 3, 2020, four hundred and eighty one episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit have aired.