Five years ago, Dick Wolf’s “Law and Order” empire was coming apart.

Though “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” was still going strong, the parent show and all other accompanying spinoffs had been yanked off the air (Does anyone recall “Law and Order: LA?”). At a time when television was in the midst of a creative renaissance with critically praised character-based shows, Wolf’s meat-and-potato procedurals looked a little stale.

And what’s happened to Wolf since?

He’s back, and then some. Wolf currently has four shows on the air, including three based in Chicago that are all delivering ratings. NBC announced Thursday that it would add a fifth Wolf show to its lineup next season with “Chicago Justice.”

The procedural, it turns out, is doing just fine.

When Wolf, 69, reflects on his improbable latest act, he can only sit back and laugh.

“One of the reasons that I’m still at the table is I have infinite patience,” he said in an interview. “It is just amazing that if you stick around long enough, people will catch on.”

The success of Wolf’s shows has propelled NBC to a strong season. It will finish in second place, behind CBS, in total viewers and in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic important to advertisers. (If CBS had not had the Super Bowl, NBC would have finished No. 1 in the demographic.) Not counting years that the network got a boost from the Super Bowl or the Olympics, that’s NBC’s best finish to a season since 2004.

And when NBC has its upfront presentation for advertisers, executives will speak with pride about tacking on yet another show from a prolific veteran.

“People roll their eyes and go, ‘Another Dick Wolf show, another Dick Wolf show,’ but who else has done anything close to this?” said NBC Entertainment’s chairman, Robert Greenblatt. “It’s really remarkable.”

Wolf’s sudden resurgence is even bringing new life to his old franchise. NBC is developing a “Law and Order” true crime series (the first season is based on the Menendez brothers), and next season will broadcast a reality show, “Law and Order: You the Jury.”

It’s been a long way back.

In 2009, the network was in serious trouble on the drama front. It had all but given up its 10 p.m. time slot, handing it over to the failed Jay Leno experiment. Greenblatt said Wolf’s slate of shows was vital to stabilizing NBC’s dramas and revving the 10 p.m. machine back to life.

“The fact that we could multiply the Dick Wolf shows, and they would all work, is enormously helpful in just trying to keep our head above water, which is basically the goal of any broadcast network these days as we see the audience fragmented in so many directions,” he said.

While the three Chicago shows have not drawn critical praise, they have more than made up for it with ratings. “Chicago Fire,” in its fourth season, and “Chicago P.D.,” in its third, both won their time slots and had their most viewed seasons: about 10 million viewers per episode for “Fire” and 9 million for “P.D.” The first-year “Chicago Med” was the fifth-highest rated new show among adults under 50. Even “Law and Order: SVU,” in its whopping 17th season, increased its ratings in the demographic by 5 percent.

“We make Mercedes S-Class sedans,” Wolf said of his shows. “They’re designed to run basically forever and be comfortable and you don’t have to think about much. We don’t make Ferraris. I love ‘Homeland’ but after six years it’s got, what, 52 episodes or something?”

That would be 60 episodes over five seasons, but point taken. By comparison, “Chicago Fire” has produced 92 episodes over its four seasons. In this era of prestige television, Wolf’s shows prove that closed-ended procedurals (perhaps with the exception of “Chicago Fire,” which is a more character-driven show) still work.

And it confounds Wolf that shows producing 70 episodes over seven years — or 10 episodes for a limited series — are called hits. Wolf prefers his brand of assembly-line programming.

“I think it’s a failure if it’s only 100 hours,” Wolf said, referring to 100 episodes, at a talk earlier this year at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles. “The idea is to go eight, 10, 12 years or longer.”

His shows skew a little older — the median age of viewers for the Chicago shows is around 57 — and they are not lavished with praise by reviewers.

“Critics don’t like them,” he said. “I can’t help that, but they were not critical raves.”

Though he is seven months shy of becoming a septuagenarian, he has no interest in walking into the sunset, even though he would be assured of going out a winner. He suggested he has another franchise he’s putting together.

“I’ve got a 6- and an 8-year-old,” he said. “I don’t plan on having their father retire in the near future.”

That’s welcome news to NBC’s Greenblatt, who said he’d seen this act before.

“These guys don’t ever want to stop doing this,” he said. “I was working with Aaron Spelling at Fox in what I call the third act of his career with ‘90210’ and ‘Melrose Place.’ He was in his 80s when he died and he had hit shows on the air. He didn’t want any more money or anything. He just loved to eat, sleep and breathe storytelling and television.”

“And that’s who Dick is,” Greenblatt continued. “Sixty-nine is nothing.”