Law and Order SVU has Paley Center special planned for January

Law and Order: SVU is getting honored in a TV special produced by NBC and The Paley Center for Media just before SVU season 21 returns.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has always been one of NBC‘s most popular shows, and now the network is celebrating SVU by giving it a one-hour TV special in January.

NBC has teamed up with The Paley Center for Media, which has previously produced shows about other NBC series like The Good Place, for a retrospective called The Paley Center Salutes Law & Order: SVU.

The program is recognizing the show’s milestone 21st season, and airs on NBC on Thursday, Jan. 2 at 9 p.m., exactly a week before SVU season 21 returns.

As you can gather from the title, the special will be focused on celebrating Special Victims Unit‘s historic run and praising the cast and crew who have kept on the show going for more than two decades.

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All of the show’s current cast—star and executive producer Mariska Hargitay, and stars Ice-T, Peter Scanavino, Jamie Gray Hyder and Kelli Giddish—will be interviewed, along with series creator Dick Wolf.

Longtime star and continuing fan favorite Christopher Meloni (Det. Elliot Stabler) will be present as well, so perhaps he’ll shed more light on his decision to leave the series that SVU fans are still talking about to this day, and the persistent requests for him to reprise his role.

Other former series regulars Raul Esparza (ADA Rafael Barba), Stephanie March (ADA Alex Cabot) and Tamara Tunie (Medical Examiner Melinda Warner) are also confirmed to return.

Writer-producers Warren Leight and Julie Martin round out the list of participants that NBC has revealed so far. Their press release does say “and more,” so it’s possible that others will be added as we get closer to the Jan. 2 premiere date.

In fact, it’d be surprising if there wasn’t, because there are quite a few Special Victims Unit alums missing at the moment.

There’s former Chicago Justice star Philip Winchester, who joined the series to fill the void left by Esparza’s departure, only for his character Peter Stone to be written out at the end of season 20.

And don’t forget ex-regulars Danny Pino (Nick Amaro), Richard Belzer (John Munch), Dann Florek (Captain Donald Cragen), Michelle Hurd (Monique Jeffries) and Dean Winters (Brian Cassidy).

Even if you just brought in all of the show’s main cast members, that’s a lot of people to interview in a one-hour show! So it’ll be interesting to see how exactly NBC and Paley handle this special, as there’s a lot of ground to cover for it to really feel complete.

At least bringing back Meloni is a plus, to see what he’ll say about his departure from the show and if he’ll ever return. Fans continue to ask about Benson and Stabler to this day, years after the actor chose not to renew his contract, so this special could shed a lot of light on that.

And hopefully it will cover many other subjects as well. Just because it’s promoting the series doesn’t mean it couldn’t teach fans something new, too, especially with more than 20 years of material.

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