The Tao of Jack McCoy

I shouldn’t really like Law & Order. After all, it’s a show that has an unrelenting and fixed format, a cast that seems to change from season to season, and ‘rips stories from the headlines’. So why is it my favourite crime show? The answer is Jack McCoy, A.D.A of New York, played by the excellent Sam Waterston. He’s the complete antithesis of the stereotypical ‘good guy lawyer’; this man will stop at nothing to get his conviction. He’ll bend every ethics law (and break several), trick defendants into incriminating each other, break witnesses down on the stand, use inadmissable evidence in creative ways; basically he’ll go to any length to get a conviction. It’s hugely entertaining. I know that he wasn’t the original DA (Channel 5 started the show in the UK from the 1997 series), but without him, the show would be just like every other crime show on the television. Okay, so the alcoholic Irish Catholic bit is a little clichéd, but he does it so well…