'Law & Order' dives into true crime with 'Menendez Murders' - San Francisco Chronicle

Most “Law & Order” shows end with the answer to whodunnit, even if the “who” doesn’t get convicted by a jury of his or her peers. With the new addition to the “Law & Order” franchise, though, we already know who did it and they’ve both been convicted.

Dick Wolf jumps into the increasingly crowded true crime pool with “Law & Order: True Crime,” premiering on Tuesday, Sept. 26, with the first of eight episodes focused on the 1989 murders of José and Kitty Menendez in Beverly Hills. In 1996, the couple’s sons, Lyle and Erik, were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for the shooting deaths of their parents.

The case was notorious, and the first trial in 1993 received gavel-to-gavel coverage from Court TV, momentarily putting the channel on the map until the rest of TV jumped on the bandwagon of covering salacious trials. The story had everything people were used to watching on nighttime soaps like “Dynasty.” The family was wealthy, the boys were spoiled, and while they admitted to the killings, they claimed years of sexual abuse by their father.

The new “Law & Order” show brings it all back with the attention to process for which Wolf is famous.

Erik (Gus Halper) and Lyle (Miles Gaston Villanueva) are well cast as the brothers. At first they appear completely unfazed by what they have done, but they waste no time in making themselves obvious persons of interest, first by going on a high-priced spending spree. Erik is the dominant brother, with Lyle weaker and acquiescent. All he cares about is tennis. But eventually, guilt works its way through his system, and the reality of what he and Erik have done cannot be denied. They seem to think that having blasted their parents away with shotguns, they can do and buy whatever they want now and no one can touch them.

Watching this from afar is brassy defense attorney Leslie Abramson (Edie Falco), who is working on another case but immediately knows from TV reports that the “boys,” as she will call them, did it.

The two episodes made available to critics efficiently set many of the pieces in place and take us up to the moment when Abramson signs on to defend the brothers.

Detective Les Zoeller (Sam Jaeger) has been at his job long enough to follow his instincts, and they begin to suggest the brothers are not behaving the way grieving children should behave. Unlike other “L&O” cops, like Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson, Zoeller is a pretty low-key kind of guy.

We also meet Dr. Jerome Oziel (Josh Charles), an oily shrink with a demanding mistress (Heather Graham) who will play an important role in the case.

The series was created by Rene Balcer, whose writing staff does a very good job with the script to make it feel real, so much so that it may seem almost perfunctory. But that’s the point, really, and underscores the naturalism of the series.

The performances are very solid overall. Charles puts a lot of distance between Oziel and Will Gardner. Villanueva and Halper are also spot on, carefully showing us how the fraternal bond spawns the plan to kill their parents. Falco, of course, is a standout. With a blond Orphan Annie hairstyle and her trademark Brooklyn accent, she doesn’t impersonate Abramson — she acts the role. She only makes a few appearances in the first two episodes, but they are enough to make us look forward to the remaining six episodes when, no doubt, there will be a lot of Falco and it will be worth watching.

David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle. Follow him on Facebook. Email: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV

Law & Order: True Crime: The Menendez Murders: 10:01 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 26, NBC

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