Los Angeles ? There’s a reason TV particularly during the summer doesn’t provide much challenging fare, says “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf.

“Television is a vast wasteland because most programmers underestimate the audience,” Wolf says, borrowing a phrase from former FCC chairman Newton Minow.

Wolf’s latest, “Crime & Punishment,” aims a little higher. The show, which makes its debut June 16 on NBC, is essentially a true-life “Law & Order,” following prosecutors from the San Diego District Attorney’s Office as they try high-profile cases.

Wolf and fellow executive producer Bill Guttentag, an Oscar- and Emmy-winning filmmaker, got a remarkable level of access to the San Diego DA’s office for several months. They followed 15 cases, filming each trial as they might for a fictional show.

“Our aim was to do a documentary that (looks) like a drama,” Wolf says. To that end, Guttentag and his crew placed three remote-controlled cameras in the courtroom, which allowed for a much wider range of shots than in typical trial coverage, which has just one camera in a fixed location.

One thing audiences won’t see is the jury it’s illegal to film jurors in California. But Guttentag says that may actually work in the show’s favor. “That was an asset, because people sitting at home become the jury,” he says. “We hope they’ll look at it and say ‘Would I convict?’ ‘Would I not convict?'”

As on the fictional show, the cases are what Guttentag calls “high-stakes” cases murder, rape and child molestation are among the charges faced.

“I think you have to really care about the outcome,” Guttentag says. “The first case that’s going to air involves a guy who killed his wife, and there’s no body, which is an extremely hard case for a prosecutor to do. And there’s a grieving family. You truly care about justice for this family.”