| Genre: | Crime drama |
| Creator: | Tim Kring |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Num Seasons: | 6 |
| Num Episodes: | 117 |
| List Episodes: | List of Crossing Jordan episodes |
| Runtime: | 42–44 minutes |
| Network: | NBC |
| Related: | Las Vegas |
Crossing Jordan is an American crime drama television series created by Tim Kring, that aired on NBC from September 24, 2001, to May 16, 2007. It stars Jill Hennessy as Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, a crime-solving forensic pathologist employed in the Massachusetts Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In addition to Jordan, the show followed an ensemble cast composed of Jordan's co-workers and police detectives assigned to the various cases.
After six seasons and 117 episodes, the series was canceled by NBC on May 14, 2007, and concluded on May 16, 2007.[1]
| Actor | Character | Role | Seasons | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |||
| Jill Hennessy | Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh | Medical Examiner | colspan="6" | |||||
| Miguel Ferrer | Dr. Garrett Macy | Chief Medical Examiner | colspan="6" | |||||
| Ravi Kapoor | Dr. Mahesh Vijay | Medical Examiner | colspan="6" | |||||
| Mahershala Ali | Dr. Trey Sanders | Medical Examiner | ||||||
| Ken Howard | Maximilian Cavanaugh | Jordan's father | ||||||
| Kathryn Hahn | Lily Lebowski | Grief Counselor | colspan="6" | |||||
| Steve Valentine | Nigel Townsend | Forensic Technician | colspan="6" | |||||
| Lorraine Toussaint | Dr. Elaine Duchamps | Medical Examiner | ||||||
| Ivan Sergei | Dr. Peter Winslow | Medical Examiner | ||||||
| Jerry O'Connell | Det. Woody Hoyt | Detective | colspan="3" | |||||
| Leslie Bibb | Det. Tallulah "Lu" Simmons | Detective | ||||||
Crossing Jordan was created by Tim Kring and was produced by Tailwind Productions in association with NBCUniversal. Singer-songwriter duo Wendy and Lisa scored the music for the show. Eric Rigler's pipes and whistles can be heard in most episodes. The scientific aspects of the show are comparable to , but Crossing Jordan is more character-driven and less graphic than the CSI franchise.
In the first season, Hennessy was the only cast member visible during the opening credits, which featured Eric Rigler's arrangement of a traditional Irish tune "The Boys on the Hilltop" (a quicker tempo, but shorter version of "Reels Part One -- The Boys on the Hilltop" from the Bad Haggis CD Trip). Starting with the second season, the credits showed all the major players and used a more rock-like, less-Irish-sounding opening theme.
Crossing Jordan is set in the same fictional universe as fellow NBC series Las Vegas. In the season-four episode "What Happens in Vegas Dies in Boston", a case takes Jordan and Woody to Las Vegas, where Woody became very well-acquainted with the Montecito's casino host, Sam Marquez (Vanessa Marcil). They maintained a long-distance relationship for a while: O'Connell appeared in five episodes of Las Vegas and Vanessa Marcil appeared as Sam in two Crossing Jordan episodes.
USA Today gave the show a two-star review and said, "What truly strains belief—and your viewing patience—are the absurd quirks Jordan adds to its plot and its characters to try to set itself apart."[2] The New York Times called it "engaging and entertaining" and "Hennessy gives Jordan an appealing, loose-cannon attitude."[3]
Crossing Jordan premiered in 2001 on NBC. It aired on Mondays, Fridays, Sundays and finally Wednesdays for its final episodes.
The show was put on hiatus for most of the 2003–2004 season to accommodate Hennessy's real-life pregnancy. The series returned on March 9, 2004, with a shortened 13-episode season. Due to the season being broadcast out of order, the cliffhanger plotline from the season-two finale was aired as the last episode of the season instead of the first; instead, the first featured an unrelated story with a humorous subplot that paid homage to Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film Rear Window.
A crossover episode of Las Vegas in which the Crossing Jordan cast appears was aired on November 17, 2006, though NBC was not airing new episodes of Crossing Jordan in autumn 2006.
Originally, the sixth season was slated for Sunday nights after the football season ended in January, but it was then scheduled to premiere on October 20, 2006, and to be on Friday nights with Medium being put into the after-football Sunday-night slot. It was scheduled to air at 8 pm Eastern/Pacific and 7 pm Central/Mountain, but NBC decided to avoid showing scripted programming at that hour. The season premiere was pre-empted in favor of 1 vs. 100, a game show hosted by Bob Saget.[4] The season premiere ran on January 14, 2007, at 10 pm Eastern/Pacific and 9 pm Central. Beginning March 7, 2007, the show moved to a new time slot, Wednesday 9/8C where it was promoted as a female empowerment block with Medium.
NBC tried syndicating Crossing Jordan during its second season.[5] Reruns are often shown on A&E in the United States and Canada. Currently, it airs in syndication on CIN (Crime and Investigation Network) and Start TV. In January 2021, the Roku Channel in the U.S. released all episodes of Crossing Jordan to stream.
Originally, the finale for the sixth season was promoted as a cliffhanger. A plane crash which left all of the main characters (with the exception of Lily) stranded atop a mountain with little hope of being discovered was reported to end with no resolution, as the story would pick up at the onset of a subsequent season. Once NBC decided against renewing Crossing Jordan for a seventh year, though, fans were treated to a different ending: Jordan ultimately confronts her held-in feelings for Woody and finally professes her love, and all of the characters are rescued in the final moments of the series. The ending provided fuel to rumors that producers recorded two endings to the finale: one in case the series would be renewed, and another in case the series would not be.
The series was cancelled on May 14, 2007, two days before the season six finale aired.
See main article: List of Crossing Jordan episodes.
NBC announced in January 2007 that it was making progress securing music rights to allow the show to be released on DVD. (Crossing Jordan relies heavily on pop music in its soundtrack.)[6] [7] The first season was released on DVD on May 6, 2008,[8] and there is no notice of substitution of music on the DVD packaging.[9] However, as of January 2018, the latter seasons were still not available via DVD in the US. In Germany, the second season was released on DVD and Blu-ray via Koch Media on September 10, 2015.[10] [11] Koch Media already re-released a remastered version of the first season in May 2015.[12] [13]
The complete 27-disc DVD collection is available in Australia from JB HI-FI,[14] EzyDVD,[15] Dymocks.,[16] Sanity[17] and Via Vision Entertainment.[18]