As of the 2024-25 TV season, Dick Wolf’s massively successful Chicago franchise has aired a combined 36 seasons. 35 of those are from the currently-airing Chicago Fire, PD, and Med, in their respective 13th, 12th, and 10th seasons. This is also the seventh consecutive season where those three series aired together on Wednesday nights, creating a “One Chicago” block featuring three emergency service branches in the same city.
Decades before the Chicago franchise, there was H.E.L.P. The Dick Wolf co-created series aired on Saturdays on ABC in spring 1990. A far cry from the success of the super-creator’s newest franchise, H.E.L.P. was the lowest-rated non-FOX program of the season. It was canceled after its six-episode season wrapped.
Synopsis
H.E.L.P. focused on the Harlem Eastside Life-saving Program — H.E.L.P. for short. Based in New York City, the Harlem Eastside Life-saving Program hosted a fire department, a police department, and an emergency medical services department. As such, H.E.L.P. (the series) focused on all three departments. The series co-starred John Mahoney, who helmed the fire department, and later went on to play retired police officer Martin Crane on Frasier. Also among the co-stars of H.E.L.P. was David Caruso, who played a police officer on the short-lived series before landing lead roles on NYPD Blue and CSI: Miami. Essentially, what the Chicagos do in three series, the Harlem-set H.E.L.P. did in one.
Ratings & Cancellation
H.E.L.P.’s run lasted just over a month — with five Saturdays in March 1990, only one episode aired outside of the month in which it premiered. While Dick Wolf’s Chicago franchise also did not get off to a particularly strong start ratings-wise, H.E.L.P.’s ratings were so low that there was no plausible way it could be saved. It averaged a 6.5 Household rating, coming in 89th place on broadcast television and a dead-last 30th place on ABC. It was even bested by six FOX programs, a network that at the time was only scheduling three nights a week. Among the FOX programs out-rating it was its time slot competition, COPS (7.0) and Totally Funny Video (7.1). H.E.L.P. was also far behind previous time slot occupants, the canceled action drama Mission: Impossible (8.2) and canceled sitcoms Mr. Belvedere (7.2) & Living Dolls (6.9). Prior to H.E.L.P., the two sitcoms were ABC’s lowest-rated series.
Aftermath
Ultimately, H.E.L.P.’s cancelation worked out in Dick Wolf’s favor. NBC picked up his new series, Law & Order, for the following season. NBC also premiered the nearly identically-themed drama Third Watch in 1999, which ran for six seasons. In the 2010s, NBC introduced the Chicago franchise, airing across three shows what H.E.L.P. did in one. The Chicago franchise has arguably even brought new life to the Law & Order franchise, which appeared to be on its way out upon the former’s premiere.
Intuitively, one would think the failure of H.E.L.P. would give network executives pause before immediately going forward with a new Dick Wolf series in Law & Order, or rehashing the premise in Third Watch, or giving Dick Wolf a second chance decades later with the Chicago franchise. The lesson to remember here is just because one show failed, doesn’t necessarily mean the premise was bad. It’s a big reason why a lot of pilots that sound like no-brainers to be ordered to series on paper end up being rejected. H.E.L.P.’s incredibly short run also gave Dick Wolf the ability to try again later on in his career.
H.E.L.P. was largely ignored at the time and forgotten about soon after, which ended up working out in Dick Wolf’s favor. There are no known ways to watch the series, and hardly any media remaining of it beyond the poster arts in this article (image sources: IMDb and JustWatch).