Four seasons into Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, Kathleen Munroe still loves her character, the keenly intelligent and intuitive Detective Sergeant Frankie Bateman. This season, Bateman is getting a new partner—and Munroe is thrilled by the fresh dynamics this presents for her character. 

Season 4 of the series is airing now, and viewers have already been introduced to John Darcy (Luke Kirby), a cynical yet observant detective who spent years in Guns & Gangs before joining Bateman in the Specialized Criminal Investigations Unit. This season, the detective duo tackles some of Toronto’s toughest cases—all inspired by real Canadian headlines—delving into the worlds of organized crime, the military, politics, AI, healthcare, and first responders.

Law & Order Toronto has truly captivated Canadian audiences—it has been television’s #1 Canadian drama for three consecutive years. As we eagerly dive into a new season of thrilling cases and genius solves, we caught up with Kathleen Munroe to hear more about Bateman and Darcy’s dynamic, filming in iconic spots around the city, and the high-profile case that inspires the season finale. 

Season 4 is underway now! What can viewers expect from this season?

We do get to get a little deeper. We get a little deeper into Toronto. We get a little deeper into the characters, and we have a new detective, Detective Darcy, played by Luke Kirby. So the whole experience of jumping into this season with a new partner was just really cool and dynamic. We both, I think, jumped into this with a lot of curiosity. So I think what people can expect is this evolving relationship and a really fantastic new character that energizes things a little bit.

How would you describe Bateman and Darcy’s partnership as it evolves throughout the season? 

Luke and I have known each other for a long time. We worked together years ago, and we have a great affection for each other and a lot of respect and trust. So to jump into something where we’re not supposed to know each other, we would have to remind ourselves sometimes to feel it out a little bit more, to not be so on the same frequency. The characters do have some similar energy that they can share sometimes. So the moments of locking into that closer to the top of the season have to be a bit sparse because we need to believe that they’re sussing each other out. We tried to almost feel like we were circling each other, observing each other. I think for Bateman, it was really filling the space that Graff occupied. I think there is a bit of a hesitance…it’s not the guy that [Bateman] is used to, but [Darcy] shows up with a lot of generosity and a lot of intelligence and a lot of curiosity, and we get somewhere. 

As you said earlier, you get a bit deeper into Toronto in this season. What was the most interesting place you shot at for season 4? 

We were shooting during the World Cup, and because of that, some of our downtown locations just were not as accessible. So we shot in Mississauga. We shot in Etobicoke more. We shot a little bit further out from downtown, and you just end up seeing how varied the experience of being in Toronto or in the GTA can be. We shot at Grossman’s, which is an iconic bar on Spadina. It really is just the neighbourhoods and the people that feel the most special for me. Just seeing the different ecosystems that make up the city. 

As usual, all of the episodes are inspired by Canadian headlines. Was there any standout story for you this season that you can hint at? 

Oh man, they’re all so interesting, even ones that might be a little bit lesser known to people on the surface. There’s one that involves some AI that ends up being quite heartbreaking. I can’t say much about the finale, but I really love the finale. We get into some of the complexities of the institutions around law enforcement that really make this show feel special. I think there’s a lens on the world of crime and justice here that expands the territory in terms of ethos and values and perspective in cop shows. We just get to look at things from different angles. And the finale, it’s quite a high-profile case that may have inspired this. But it’s complicated. I think the more complicated, the more interesting for me—because that’s where the character stuff gets juicy. 

You’ve played Frankie Bateman for four seasons now. What is it like for you as an actor to get to spend this much time with a character? 

It’s easier and easier to feel where there are things that feel consistent in the writing, where there are things that feel new, where there are discoveries, where there’s room for discovery, where there are challenges to my vision of who this woman is. And then with this new dynamic, inevitably different things are brought out about her. I just want to discover more things all the time. I mean, I would do this for decades and decades and decades if I had my way. Especially in shows like this, they’re not immediately character-forward. We tune in because the cases are interesting, and there’s a format that everybody loves, including myself. There’s an iconography that we want to swim around in as viewers. And then through the cases, as time goes on, we get to see little bits more and more of all the characters. So it takes a while. It’s a slow reveal. So four seasons in, we get to learn more. It’s a real privilege, I love it so much. 

It’s wonderful that a woman is leading television’s #1 Canadian drama, and that audiences get to witness such a layered female character on their screens. Is this something you’ve considered during your time on the show?

I’m always thinking from my interiority, and then the character’s interiority, which have some similarities and some differences. But it’s a privilege to point out when something hits me as a woman versus hits me as a cop or hits me as a person, and sort of parsing that stuff out and going, okay, what is the strongest choice here? And the collaborative spirit of the show allows for some exploration of how this particular woman is navigating stuff that we often see men doing. So it’s always a question. It changes all the time, week to week, case to case. And I think the core team—our producers, our head writer, some of our directors, other writers that are women—I think we get a real mix of experiences coming to the table for the creation of the show, so I feel very lucky to be handled with that kind of care.  

New episodes of Season 4 of Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent drop on Thursdays on Citytv, or stream on Citytv+.