Cagney & Lacey

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Cagney and Lacey
Main title card
Genre	Drama
Running time	1 hour
Creator(s)	Barbara Avedon Barbara Corday
Starring	Tyne Daly Sharon Gless Meg Foster Al Waxman John Karlen Carl Lumbly Martin Kove
Country of origin	United States
Original channel	CBS
Original run	March 25, 1982–May 16, 1988
No. of episodes	125
IMDb profile

Cagney & Lacey was an American television series, which aired on CBS for six seasons from 1982 to 1988. The series starred Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly as New York City police detectives. The premise of the show teamed up two women as members of the police force who led very different lives. Christine Cagney (played by Gless) was a single career-minded woman, while Mary Beth Lacey (played by Daly) was a married working mother.

Loretta Swit played the role of Christine Cagney in the original television movie, but she was forced to decline the role in the series when the producers of M*A*S*H refused to let her out of her contract. When the series first aired as a midseason replacement in the spring of 1982, Meg Foster played the role of Cagney, but she was replaced by Gless in the fall; the network deemed Foster too aggressive and too likely to be perceived as lesbian by the viewers.

In 1983, the series was cancelled by CBS, but was subsequently brought back to the network's schedule after fans of the show organized a major letter-writing campaign. TV Guide celebrated the show's return with the cover reading "Welcome Back". The show went on to earn an impressive 36 Emmy nominations and 14 wins during its run, including 6 nominations for stars Daly and Gless—4 wins for Daly and 2 for Gless.

The show also garnered controversy. In 1985 there was an episode about the bombing of an abortion clinic which several CBS affiliates refused to air. Perhaps the most shocking and controversial episode was in 1987, "The City is Burning", based on the December 1986 racial incident in Queens, New York's Howard Beach neighborhood. The explosive episode included racial slurs, such as "nigger," that were, and still are, taboo in primetime. Other storylines included the birth of Lacey's third child and Cagney's experience as a victim of date rape.

The show also included a dose of comedy. The show's success was due in part to the well-written scripts and the superb acting of Gless and Daly. Cagney and Lacey is ranked with Hill Street Blues and others as one of television's best dramas.^{[citation needed]}Al Waxman also starred as Cagney and Lacey's supervisor, Lt. Bert Samuels. Dan Shor joined the cast from 1985 to 1986 as detective Jonah Newman.

The first season main titles are accompanied by the theme song "Ain't That the Way" by Michael Stull, sung by Marie Cain, and show Cagney and Lacey being promoted to plainclothes detectives and later disguised as prostitutes. From season two the instrumental theme tune is composed by Bill Conti, and among the incidents depicted in the main titles is Lacey dragging Cagney from a shop window.