TELEVISION Hey, even more 'Law & amp; Order'!

New program seems -- well, just downright familiar.
By ROB OWEN
SCRIPPS HOWARD
The "chung-chung" -- or maybe it's a "bong-bong" -- strikes again. Anyone who watches "Law & amp; Order" knows that sound, the staccato bass heard between scenes on all versions of "Law & amp; Order." The third spinoff from the original is called "Law & amp; Order: Trial by Jury" and it previews at 10 p.m. Thursday before moving to its regular time slot, 10 p.m. Friday, the next night.
"In the criminal justice system, the most important right is a trial by jury. This is one of those trials," says the "L & amp;O" announcer at the start of each episode. The conceit of this latest edition is that it tells stories from the point of view of defendants, defense attorneys, judges and jurors.
Rotating cast of characters
Seeing some of the regular "Law & amp; Order" characters on "Trial by Jury" does a nice job of setting this latest iteration in a familiar universe, but in other ways the show feels overly familiar. The time spent with the jury, which would appear to be an important part of the show, given its prominence in the title, is scant and uninteresting. Fox's short-lived Tom Fontana drama, "The Jury," provided a far more insightful look behind those closed doors in its brief time on the air last summer.
Bebe Neuwirth leads the cast as assistant district attorney Tracey Kibre.
She's followed seemingly everywhere she goes, puppy-dog-like, by ADA Kelly Gaffney (Amy Carlson). Franchise staple Fred Dalton Thompson plays district attorney Arthur Branch.
There's also a district attorney investigator, Hector Salazar (Kirk Acevedo).
Beyond that, it's a rotating cast of characters, many of them familiar to longtime "Law & amp; Order" fans. Most prominent is the late Jerry Orbach, who was intended to be a series regular and completed two episodes before his death from prostate cancer late last year. He sounds hoarse in the episodes airing Thursday and Friday night.
Other familiar faces include cameos by Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) in Thursday's series premiere and former assistant district attorney Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell), now a judge, in Friday's episode.
'Jerry is irreplaceable'
"The thing that makes this show totally different from the other three shows is that it is the first one that has a differing point of view," executive producer Dick Wolf said in January at an NBC press conference in Los Angeles. "'Law & amp; Order,' 'Special Victims Unit' and 'Criminal Intent' are all told from the point of view of law enforcement or the prosecutors. This show has a 360-degree omniscient point of view where you're going to see both defendants and defense attorneys and judges and jurors."
Neuwirth said "Trial by Jury" also shows more about the formation of each side's case, and with that, "you see a bit of their personalities with their own elite squad of detectives. You see their cadets, the people who work for them and all their personalities, what their jobs are. And you see how the defense forms its [case]. And you see a little bit more maybe than some of the other shows about their whole world."
The disappearance of Orbach's character will be explained in a future episode, but Wolf declined to reveal how Briscoe will be written out of the series.
"Jerry is irreplaceable," Wolf said in January. "He is the embodiment of the acting profession. He was a true trouper. The thing that makes us feel as positive as we can is that Jerry truly died with his boots on. He was shooting three weeks before he passed. He was on the set. He was Jerry to the very end. He will be missed."