Cagney & Lacey

Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless did a great job with Cagney and Lacey in the 1980's. Not only did Cagney and Lacey have a great theme tune but it has great plots and dialogue throughout.

Like a lot of great cop shows, this series presented it's characters as real people with real emotions. Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless were aided by a brilliant supporting cast throughout.

The show wasn't just about police work. Both Cagney and Lacey had their fair share of personal problems outside their job ranging from alcoholism to conflicts of interest with their job. We got to seem them convey a whole range of emotions throughout but we still got to see them do some wonderful detective work. I actually think they were both convincing as detectives.

All in all, this was a great series, possibly the greatest buddy cop series of the 80's.

This show was unique in that it was the first time that two basically average looking women played the leads in a TV show that was not about the fact that they were just average looking women. The show was also ground-breaking in that both detectives in the partnership were women - smart, capable women. Women had gradually been integrated into TV police forces over the 15 years prior to this series, but they were usually part of a crime-solving team such as on "Ironside". The balance in this show was not through the well-known old cop/young cop formula. Instead, both detectives were 30-something women. The contrast came in the form of their marital status and their personal situations. Lacey was married and a mother, and Cagney was single.

There was a pilot and six episodes during the 1981-1982 season starring an actress other than Sharon Gless as Detective Christine Cagney. In the 1982-1983 season the show settled into the dynamic that made it so popular and which most people remember.

I enjoyed this show from the pilot movie with Loretta Swit of MASH fame as Chris Cagney,single and hungry to carve a career in the police force and Tyne Daly,as the sensitive,married mother of two,Mary Beth Lacey,both women recently promoted from uniform to plain clothes and dealing with highly chauvinistic male colleagues. When the TV series started,Tyne Daly was back but an actress with striking blue eyes,Meg Foster was now playing Chris Cagney. Apparently there was a feeling that the two women were now too alike,now,I haven't seen any of the Meg Foster episodes for 20 years,so can't really remember them but always felt Foster got a bit of a raw deal,when she was axed after just six episodes. Anyway,the series came with a catchy new theme tune and Sharon Gless now as Chris Cagney,who funnily enough,was always the production team's first choice for Cagney and the matching of Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless was excellent and according to Miss Gless the secret of playing Cagney was "talking tough and wearing pink!" The writing and acting was always first rate,one of my favourite episodes was "Burn Out" when Lacey,all set for a much needed vacation has her leave cancelled at the last minute and goes AWOL and ends up on a beach and after spending time with a woman of a similar age,who has drifted all her life,Lacey realises although she sometimes has to juggle so many things,she loves her life. Cagney and Lacey were not best friends,they could argue very forcibly,like the time when a member of the public was shot by accident,Cagney said he had a gun,Lacey didn't see it,leading to Cagney saying Lacey was just a cop for the money,not like her for a career,she later had to apologise for that one. I hope this entire series comes out on DVD soon,including the Meg Foster episodes too,I highly recommend it.

Most from the 80's will throw out Hill Street Blues as the greatest but to me there were others that were equally good but just never got the recognition. This was one of those shows.

This show really hit hard with issues like drug addiction to killers to the gay issue and even teenage prostitution. It ran the gamut. And it was no white-washed make everything rosy by the end of the show typical of usual TV shows of the day.

From Dt. Cagney, the single can never find the right guy who happens to be beautiful and hard nosed to Dt. Lacey, who was a wife, mother and housewife...on the side. Both characters gelled together. Couldn't have been a better yin and yang type duo. Both were women but both were totally different in personality.

I think my biggest complaint about the show is that it got to "political" towards the end of its run. Too many shows where the topic was preachy. You know, where they'll deal with a topic where it's pretty clear what their agenda was. I don't care for those types of shows as I can make up my mind on issues without any help.

To me, this was a great cop show of the 80's. Don't be off-put by the show having 2 female leads. If you are, you'll miss out because this was a really good show in it's day.

Cagney and Lacey was one of the best acted, best written, best conceived police shows in TV history. Ranking alongside Hill Street Blues and Morse in terms of its quality, I would suggest it is one of the finest television series ever made, greatly surpassing most TV made today. Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless kept this series going so beautifully, with never a dull moment, and never anything less than perfect performances. So instinctive, so moving, so engaging and so charming - the two are among the great television partnerships. The gritty, honest dynamic those two wonderful actors generated is a beautiful achievement. It is actors like this that make television occasionally magnificent. What a shame we don't have anything to compare these days to this.