As if Dick Wolf didn’t have enough shows on his plate as it was, there’s one more from the uber-producer coming! We take a look at everything we know about the new series, and the stage of development it's in.
It’s hard to flip on a network show one night and not see a Dick Wolf Entertainment series airing. The man is the brains behind the Law & Order, One Chicago and FBI franchises and one of the top-producing giants in TV.
There's another Dick Wolf show in the works
Per Deadline, NBC is keeping up its connection with Wolf by ordering a new crime pilot, What the Dead Know. It’s part of a slate of pilots by the network that includes Puzzled, the procedural Protection, and a reboot of the classic private eye drama The Rockford Files.
Given Wolf’s long history with NBC, it’s likely his show will get more attention and add another crime series to his plate.
What is What the Dead Know about?
Based on a memoir by former New York City medical examiner Barbara Butcher, theWhat the Dead Know pilot will be written by Beth Reinhart, a veteran of FBI: Most Wanted. The biography, published in 2023, featured Butcher giving her frank account of recovering from alcoholism to become a top coroner, only the second woman hired as Chief Medical Examiner of NYC and the first to last more than three months.
The book had Butcher sharing her tales from surprising crime scenes to the horrors of 9/11. The TV series appears to be taking inspiration from the book with an original character.
“What the Dead Know centers on death Investigator Ava Ledger who is really good with dead bodies. It’s the living that give her trouble. The series follows Ava as she teams with the NYPD to solve their toughest cases.”
Rinehart executive produces with Wolf Entertainment’s Dick Wolf, Tom Thayer, Peter Jankowski and Anastasia Puglisi. This sounds like an interesting procedural even if it’s hardly the first time we’ve had a crime show with the medical examiner as the lead character (See the Canadian drama Coroner and the Dana Delaney ABC series Body of Proof).
This is still in the early stages of development so we don’t have a cast attached yet. Also, even if the pilot is made, it’s still not a certainty it will make it to air given the number of pilots every year that aren’t picked up.
There’s also a question of where NBC would fit it into their schedule. The network cancelled some top crime shows last year, such as Found and The Irrational, raising the question of whether fans are tired of standard crime procedurals.
Still, Wolf has a name value other showrunners lack, especially with NBC. That might push this project to become a new addition for the 2026-27 season. We’ll see how it falls out but one should never bet against a producer with the successful track record Wolf has.