The Steve Wilkos Show, like the Jerry Springer and Maury Povich shows before it, has been filmed in Connecticut since 2009. The show is produced at the Stamford Media Center, where Wilkos and his team have been located for over a decade. Wilkos is a former police officer and Marine, and his straightforward approach to family, criminal, and true crime issues often leads to explosive confrontations on camera.

Many guests come to the show with very shady pasts, and it's not uncommon for their claims to be unfounded or even outright lies. Wilkos isn't afraid to call out these guests by name and often chastises them for making false accusations or lying on their lie detector test, especially when those lies result in someone getting hurt or worse.

Accomplice by Inaction

In several episodes, he's called out mothers who are shown to have known their partner was abusing or molesting their child, but did nothing to intervene or stop the abuse. In the case of 3-year-old Arabella Parker, who was beaten so badly by her mother's boyfriend that she was left in a coma with a 10% chance of survival, her mother passed a lie detector test, but Wilkos blasted her for doing nothing to help her daughter.

He also reminds guests, often to their annoyance, that he was a police officer and Marine for twelve years. Occasionally, he calls out guests who try to take the law into their own hands by attacking an abusive spouse or parent, warning that such actions will likely get them arrested and possibly taken away from their children.