‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 15: Is a renewal around the bend?

Anytime that you are a show that is beyond its sixth or so season on the air, there are of course going to be many questions surrounding your future. So when you are a show that has actually been on the air for as long as “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” has, you pretty much get these sort of questions every year.

The last time that there was really significant drama surrounding the show’s future (at least from the public vantage point) was when Christopher Meloni ended up exiting the show a few years back. But with there being no official renewal of the show for a sixteenth season yet, fans are starting to worry. Should they? At the moment, we would advise a little bit of caution for one simple reason: The ratings are pretty solid. This is not NBC”s highest-rated program, but we feel like they are generally happy with it, and everyone involved seems to be enjoying the work.

This statement was echoed by executive producer Warren Leight, who suggested to E! News that the lack of a renewal so far really is not tied to any contractual problems behind the scenes:

“Creatively everyone is very engaged this year and our sense is we’re having a nice run and I think the actors are—I’m sure some of them will want a couple of more days off here and there—but in general, I think we’ll be ready if and when a network exec makes an announcement.”

That announcement may come as late as the May sweeps, but we feel like one thing that could expedite it for this show in particular is if both “Believe” and “Crisis” both fall more in their next airings on Sunday. This would leave NBC with “The Blacklist,” just-renewed “Chicago Fire” and “Chicago PD” (which are in the same universe as “SVU”), and “Grimm” (which was also just renewed) as their sole scripted anchors. “Revolution” and “Dracula” are likely gone, and “Parenthood” and “Hannibal” are critic favorites that are firmly right now toss-ups to return.

Photo: NBC