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Dennis Farina does such a great job playing cops for one very simple reason: he was a cop. And not just for a little while, to pay his Yale Drama tuition, either; for several years, until he was discovered on the job in Chicago.

Dennis Farina is great at playing wiseguys because...well, probably because he spent some time with them when he was booking them or interrogating them or hitting them in the face with phone books or whatever it is cops generally do with criminals. Also because he's Italian. And also because he's...

We were about to say that Farina's a pretty good actor, but the truth is that he's not. Or, at least, if he has any range as an actor, we have no evidence of it. Yeah, at first glance, it seems like there's an impressively large gulf between "cop" and "wiseguy." But just because they're on either side of the law doesn't mean they behave all that differently. Both either have to be tough, or to give the impression of toughness. Both engage in activities that might result in one's nose getting broken. Both spend a lot of time at the cop shop.

But how can we hold Farina's lack of versatility against him when he does that thing he does so well? He's delightful as "Cousin Abraham 'Avi' Denovitz" in Snatch -- disgusted and confused by the uncivilized state of organized crime in Britain, finally pounding back a shot on the plane as he flees, in defeat, back to the more predictable cons in the U.S. He's perfectly oblivious as a dumb yet pompous Miami mobster in Get Shorty, accessorizing his spectacularly broken nose with a series of sherbet-coloured suits. On the legitimate side of the legal divide, he's appropriately bark-y and businesslike whether he's in a prestigious vehicle for his talents (film's original Jack Crawford in Manhunter, a retired cop turned PI in Out of Sight, the acclaimed TV series Crime Story) or not (The Mod Squad, Paparazzi, Striking Distance, and so on, and so on). We never watched him on In-Laws -- partly because we barely had a chance before it got cancelled -- but we find him much more intimidating as a boring white girl's stern dad, barely tolerating his new son-in-law, than we did Robert De Niro in exactly the same role in Meet the Parents. Possibly because De Niro may play the bad-ass, but he is (a) just faking it and (b) approximately three feet four inches tall. Whereas Dennis Farina was professionally trained in various devastating yet invisible methods of messing up political-convention protesters. He was a cop in Chicago, people.

This is why Farina was the only possible choice to replace Jerry Orbach on Law & Order this season. Orbach -- a veteran of twelve of the show's fourteen seasons, many more than any other current cast member -- is fundamentally irreplaceable in the role of "Grizzled Old Cop Who's Seen It All And Is Impressed By Nothing, Yet Is Still Capable Of Real Rage, So Don't Piss Him Off, Seriously." They couldn't go the route of the other L&O spin-offs, and pair Jesse L. Martin with some lady cop, trying to look all hard as she teeters along in her stack-heeled boots; the mothership needs a believable old veteran to take us into the opening credits with a little gallows humour at the crime scene, and Dennis Farina can do that shit without a script.

(Just to be safe, though, the writers should give his character a few fractious ex-wives and a drinking problem. We don't like change!)