Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is an American police procedural crime drama television series created by Dick Wolf for NBC. The first spin-off of Law & Order, it stars Mariska Hargitay as Detective Olivia Benson, now the commanding officer of the Special Victims Unit after originally having been Stabler's partner in a fictionalized version of the New York City Police Department, and Christopher Meloni as Detective Elliot Stabler. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit follows the detectives of the Special Victims Unit as they investigate and prosecute sexually based crimes. Some of the episodes are loosely based on real crimes that have received media attention.
Jennifer Beals is an American actress. She made her film debut in My Bodyguard (1980), before receiving critical acclaim for her performance as Alexandra Owens in Flashdance (1983), for which she won NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.
Clea Helen D'Etienne DuVall is an American actress and filmmaker. Her film appearances include The Faculty (1998); But I'm a Cheerleader; Girl, Interrupted ; Ghosts of Mars (2001); Identity;21 Grams ; The Grudge (2004); Zodiac (2007); and Argo (2012). On television, DuVall starred as Emma Borden in Lizzie Borden Took an Ax (2014) and its miniseries spinoff, The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (2015). Her other credits include Carnivàle (2003–2005), Heroes (2006–2007), American Horror Story (2012–2013), Better Call Saul (2015–2017), Veep (2016–2019), and The Handmaid's Tale (2018–2022). She also voiced Elsa on Fox's HouseBroken, which she co-created, from 2021 to 2023.
The L Word is a television drama series that aired on Showtime in the US from 2004 to 2009. The series follows the lives of a group of lesbian and bisexual women who live in West Hollywood, California. The premise originated with Ilene Chaiken, Michele Abbott and Kathy Greenberg; Chaiken is credited as the primary creator of the series and also served as its executive producer.
Leisha Hailey is an American actress and musician known for playing Alice Pieszecki in the Showtime Networks series The L Word and The L Word: Generation Q. Hailey first came to the public's attention as a musician in the pop duo The Murmurs and has continued her music career as part of the band Uh Huh Her.
Katherine Sian Moennig is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Shane McCutcheon on The L Word (2004–2009), as well as Jake Pratt on Young Americans (2000). Moennig played the role of Lena in the Showtime series Ray Donovan from 2013 to 2019. She played a recurring role on Grown-ish on Freeform as Professor Paige Hewson in seasons 2 and 3. She reprised her role as Shane McCutcheon in The L Word: Generation Q in 2019. Moennig currently hosts the podcast PANTS with close friend and L Word co-star, Leisha Hailey.
Richard Anthony Wolf is an American film and television producer, best known for his Law & Order franchise. Since 1990, the franchise has included six police/courtroom dramas and four international spinoffs. He is also creator and executive producer of the Chicago franchise, which since 2012, has included four Chicago-based dramas, and the creator and executive producer of the FBI franchise, which since 2018, has also become a franchise after spinning off two additional series.
Jennifer "Jenny" Diane Schecter is a fictional character from the American Showtime television drama series The L Word, played by Mia Kirshner. Jenny debuted on-screen during the pilot episode and remained until the series' final episode. Jenny became well documented in the media for her outlandish plots. Jenny was created by series creator Ilene Chaiken, based on herself as a younger woman living in the lesbian community. Chaiken implemented a series of changes to the character, one of which being the inclusion of a sexual abuse story line and self-harm, which some critics observed as being attempts to make her likable in the LGBT community. One storyline that gained mainstream attention was adopting a homeless dog, only to have it put down for personal gain. Other story lines include stripping, writing novels, coming out, directing a film, affairs, and her possible murder. The final season is based around the lead-up to her death, during which Jenny made herself extremely unpopular with her friends, who became suspects.
Jenji Leslie Kohan is an American television writer and producer. She is best known as the creator and showrunner of the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds and the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black. She has received nine Emmy Award nominations, winning one as supervising producer of the comedy series Tracey Takes On....
The Real L Word is an American reality television series aired on the cable station Showtime, where it premiered on June 20, 2010. The show was created by executive producer Ilene Chaiken and Magical Elves Productions, following the success of the television drama The L Word also created by Chaiken. The Real L Word follows a group of lesbians in their daily lives in Los Angeles, and as of the third season, Brooklyn.
Chaiken is a surname of Yiddish origin. Notable people with the surname include:
David Herbert Caspe is an American film and television writer. As a writer-producer, he is best known for his work in television as creator of sitcoms such as ABC's Happy Endings, the Showtime comedy Black Monday, and the NBC sitcoms Kenan and Marry Me. Other work includes writing the 2012 film That's My Boy and co-creating the YouTube Premium series Champaign ILL.
The Handmaid's Tale is an American dystopian television series created by Bruce Miller, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The series was ordered by the streaming service Hulu as a straight-to-series order of ten episodes, for which production began in late 2016. The plot features a dystopia following a Second American Civil War wherein a theonomic, totalitarian society subjects fertile women, called "Handmaids", to child-bearing slavery.
The first season of American/Canadian co-produced drama television series The L Word premiered on Showtime on January 18, 2004 and ended on April 11, 2004, created by Ilene Chaiken, Michele Abbott and Kathy Greenberg. The series portrayed the lives of a group of lesbians and their friends, connections, family and lovers in the trendy Greater Los Angeles, California city of West Hollywood. The series was highly popular and was Showtime's highest rated series. It was renewed for a second and third season.
The sixth and final season of The L Word started airing on January 18, 2009 and ended its original run on March 8 of the same year. 8 episodes were produced instead of 12.
Colette Burson is an American television writer, screenwriter, producer and director. She is the creator, executive producer and showrunner of the HBO television show, Hung. In 2021 she is adapting the best selling novel The Growing Season by Sarah Frey for ABC, as well as writing the limited series Love Canal for Showtime, directed by Patricia Arquette. Past work on shows includes Los Espookys for HBO and The Riches for FX. She is also the writer and director of the 2017 film Permanent.
Marja-Lewis Ryan is an American writer, director, producer, and actress. She is best known for writing, co-starring, and co-producing the LGBT drama film, The Four-Faced Liar, which won multiple awards, including Outstanding First Narrative Feature at L.A. Outfest. She is the executive producer and showrunner for the sequel to The L Word, called The L Word: Generation Q, which premiered in December 2019.
The L Word: Generation Q is an American drama television series produced by Showtime that premiered on December 8, 2019 and ran for three seasons, ending in April of 2023. It is a sequel series to The L Word, which aired on Showtime from 2004 to 2009. Similar to its predecessor, the series follows the lives of a queer group of friends who live in Los Angeles, California.
Law & Order: Organized Crime is an American crime drama television series that premiered on April 1, 2021, on NBC. The seventh series in the Law & Order franchise and a spin-off of Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the series stars Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler, reprising his role from SVU. The show features a "single-arc" storyline that takes multiple episodes to resolve.
L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin is a 2014 American television documentary film directed by Lauren Lazin. Produced by Ilene Chaiken as part of The L Word franchise, it premiered on Showtime on August 8, 2014. The film follows the lives of various lesbians living in the Bible Belt of the United States.
