IT was a groundbreaking show with the lead female characters tackling crime - as well as sexism - on the streets of New York, watched by more than 50 million people around the world at the height of its success. Today, Cagney & Lacey turns 40.
Forty years?
The first episode of the hit US cop show aired on March 25, 1982, focusing on the friendship between blonde detective Sergeant Christine Cagney - single and focused on her career - and brunette detective Mary Beth Lacey, married with children and struggling to juggle family life with the demands of investigating crime in Manhattan.
Who were the stars?
Wisconsin-born actress Tyne Daly, now 76, played Lacey and LA-born Sharon Gless, now 78, played Cagney in the series and the pair remain firm friends, reuniting on screen in a 2010 episode of US drama Burn Notice.
How many episodes were there?
Airing on CBS in the United States and on the BBC in the UK, 125 episodes were made in all from 1982, after an initial TV movie in 1981 that starred M*A*S*H actress Loretta Swift in the role of Cagney. The first six episodes also featured a different actress in the role, before Gless came on board. After apparently ending in 1988, it returned with a number of TV movies in the 1990s, regularly appearing in the top 10 most watched shows in the UK.
It tackled sexism?
Storylines showed the duo fighting crime in fine knits and all the while, coping with the sexist attitudes of the male detectives and spotlit the toll of crimefighting on their personal lives; paving the way for a raft of female-led crime shows, including Prime Suspect, created by writer Lynda La Plante and starring Helen Mirren, with the author writing the 1990s series as a homage to Cagney & Lacey. Gless said in a recent interview: "Lynda and I had lunch one day in Los Angeles and she told me that she wrote Prime Suspect as a homage to Cagney & Lacey. When Helen Mirren won her first Emmy [in 1996], the first people she thanked on camera were Cagney & Lacey.”
It almost didn’t make it?
In the 1982/83 series, viewing figures fell and the show was cancelled, but fan protests saw it reinstated.
Looking back?
Daly said in an interview with The Big Issue: “The 1980s was an age of women being pitted against each other, so if there was anything unique about the show, it was about the partnership between two women. They weren’t friends, they weren’t like each other, but they had to rely on each other’s smarts in dire situations and be serious, professional partners. That was new.”
And?
Gless said in an interview promoting her new book about her life and career, ‘Apparently There Were Complaints’: "While we were shooting it [Cagney & Lacey], we didn't know the kind of impact this show was going to have on history. We changed the history of television for women…The women fighting today came from that era of Cagney & Lacey."
Who’s watching now?
The series is available to buy on Amazon Prime and fan sites enthuse online, including the Cagney & Lacey Appreciation society on Facebook, where viewers clamour for a new movie.
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