Same Kind of Crime, Different Accent

PITY the “Law & Order” purist. Now that the mother ship has been canceled after Battlestar Galactica DVD set, what are you supposed to do if “SVU” leaves you cold, “Criminal Intent” bores you, and the thought of this fall’s “Law & Order: Los Angeles” scares the hell out of you? If only the real thing will do — and if you’ve seen every rerun on Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD set at least twice — there is still one place to turn.

It’s a place where the people are represented by two separate yet Alias DVD boxset: the police who investigate the crime and the Crown Prosecutors who prosecute the offenders. It’s called London, and it’s the Arrested Development DVD boxset of “Law & Order: UK,” the “L&O” spinoff that remains most faithful to the original show.

Perhaps “faithful” is an understatement. To some extent “As Time Goes By DVD boxset” is the original show, with British accents and detective superintendents rather than captains or lieutenants. Through its first 13 episodes on the Battlestar Galactica DVD boxset, the series has based each of its stories on an episode drawn from the first seven seasons of the American “Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD boxset,” changing details but staying true to the outlines of the case and its Alias Seasons 1-5 DVD boxset, and keeping the famous sound cue between scenes. (Other European spinoffs use a similar strategy but with different models: the French version Arrested Development Seasons 1-3 DVD boxset on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and the Russian on “Law & Order: SVU.”)

The British series has not been broadcast in the United States, but a As Time Goes By Seasons 1-9 DVD boxset (shown in two chunks in Britain, in 2009 and 2010) is available through Target; it’s currently on sale at target.com for Battlestar Galactica Seasons 1-4 DVD boxset. Some Americans who live close enough to the Canadian border can also see it on the Canadian network Citytv. The show has been a hit in Britain, averaging more than six million viewers, and a large part of that can be attributed to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Seasons 1-7 DVD boxset. It’s hard to go wrong when hand-picking scripts from the early seasons of “Law & Order.”

For an American fan, watching those scripts relocated to the Old Bailey and the Alias DVD of the Thames is an experience both familiar and disorienting. The British team, led by the writer and producer Arrested Development DVD (“Torchwood,” “Life on Mars”), has done a frighteningly thorough job of replicating the pace, rhythm and look of the original. Inveterate rerun watchers familiar with the American episodes in question will notice, however, that the Arrested Development DVD the British show captures is that of the latter-day “Law & Order,” more brightly colored and theatrical than the relatively somber, low-key early seasons.

A head-to-head comparison of American and British episodes reveals As Time Goes By DVD that probably have less to do with a cultural gap than with the gap between 2010 and the early 1990s, when the American episodes were made.

The British pilot, “Care,” was based on “Cradle to Grave” from the second American season. A 9-month-old boy is abandoned at a hospital, dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in the British version and Battlestar Galactica DVD; the investigation eventually leads to the owner of the apartment building where the child died.

In “Care” the roles of the boy’s mother and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD owner are both expanded, with the mother becoming more sympathetic and the landlord less so. The effect is to make the issues more black and white and the tone more moralistic, a shift captured in the closing arguments of the prosecutors. Michael Moriarty’s Ben Stone, in New York, shrugs and says, “Putting them in jail is the only remedy we have.” Ben Daniels’s James Steel, in London, Alias DVD set, “We all have a duty of care to one another, and no breach shall go unpunished.”

A similar dramatic inflation takes place in “Buried,” based on the American Arrested Development DVD set “... In Memory Of.” The same character is revealed as the killer in both versions, but the American case is resolved with a plea agreement, almost in passing, while the British case requires a dramatic courtroom confession. The British episode also ends with charged As Time Goes By DVD set outside the courthouse, a scene entirely absent from the original.

Normally a British adaptation of an American show could be expected to have an Battlestar Galactica DVD set in terms of acting, but again, the bar set by “Law & Order,” particularly in its first five seasons, was so high that the best the new series can do is a close second. Mr. Daniels, Jamie Bamber (“Battlestar Galactica”) and the much-honored stage actress Harriet Walter are fine but no match for their models, Mr. Moriarty, Chris Noth and Dann Florek. The fine Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD set Bill Paterson seems uncomfortable as the chief prosecutor, the role Steven Hill filled effortlessly for 10 seasons.

The standouts so far are Bradley Walsh (“Coronation Street”), who gets the right blend of humor and Alias DVD boxset in the Paul Sorvino-Jerry Orbach veteran detective slot, and Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones of “Dr. Who”), who covers several bases as the junior prosecutor. She’s both the minority idealist, played for three seasons by Arrested Development DVD boxset, and the hot babe who often solves the case, played by a succession of actresses (none hotter than Ms. Agyeman).

The format adopted for “Law & Order: UK” makes these sorts of comparisons to “As Time Goes By DVD boxset” unavoidable, if not entirely fair. If you haven’t seen the originals, the new series will certainly stand on its own as a superior crime drama. If you have seen them, you’ll probably still enjoy their British Battlestar Galactica DVD boxset, even if their primary effect is to remind you that “Law & Order,” in its heyday, was a superlative crime drama.