In celebration of the series’ 25th anniversary, Cagney & Lacey 1 arrives on DVD presenting the second season, which ran 22 episodes from October 1982 to May 1983. The set is subtitled “The True Beginning” because this was when Sharon Gless and Tyne Daley started their partnership.

Writer-producers Barbara Corday and Barbara Avedon shopped the project around for years. CBS was finally interested as a vehicle for Loretta Swit, who was working on M*A*S*H, so they greenlit a TV-movie version in which she would play Christine Cagney. Corday’s husband, Barney Rozenzweig, was the executive producer and Tyne Daly starred as Mary Beth Lacey. The show did so well a series was ordered, but Swit couldn’t get out of M*A*S*H.

The producers wanted Sharon Gless, but she was under contract to Universal, so Meg Foster was cast as Cagney. The series got poor ratings and was canceled after its six-episode run in the spring of 1982. Negotiations took place to get the show back, but they had to lose Foster because she was considered masculine and aggressive, which really means people saw her character as a lesbian. Foster having played one in A Different Story probably contributed to this view. Gless became available and the rest is television history.

Quoting from Rozenzweig on the show’s website, “Cagney & Lacey was never a police drama; it was about two women who happened to be cops.” Cagney is a single career woman. Lacey is a wife and mother. They have an interesting dynamic as they struggle to make it in this male world as each take different paths. Cagney is usually willing to accept circumstances at work to get in good with the males. Lacey is her own woman and won’t compromise. For example, when a stripper performs at the police station, Cagney joined the fellows, but Lacey had no part in it because she found it degrading. Cagney pointed out that a year ago they wouldn’t even have been asked.