TV SERIES · 1981– · USA
Cagney & Lacey
21 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (21)
- #001
Loretta Swit requested that Tyne Daly play the role of Lacey.
- #002
The series was cancelled at the end of the 1982-83 season due to low ratings. In response, viewers wrote to CBS to protest the cancellation. That effort, combined with rising ratings for the show's summer repeats, led the network to reverse its decision. Although the actors had just been released from their contracts, they were soon brought back to work on the series. The show was relaunched in March 1984 and aired until 1988.
- #003
From the second season onward, the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series went to one of the show's stars. Tyne Daly won the award four times and Sharon Gless twice.
- #004
Miguel Ferrer and his brother Rafael had guest roles on the series early in their careers. Their episodes were to be shot close together, so they decided to vacation in the area. They invited their father José Ferrer, who after failing as a professional athlete was trying to figure out his next move, and their cousin George Clooney. During that vacation, Miguel encouraged George to take up acting.
- #005
Executive producer Barney Rosenzweig was married to co-creator Barbara Corday when the series began. They eventually divorced, and Rosenzweig later married Sharon Gless.
- #006
Coincidentally, the series was filmed in a small warehouse on Lacey Street.
- #007
Jo Corday, the mother of series creator Barbara Corday, plays a bag lady in several episodes.
- #008
The pilot script was first written in the 1970s for a feature film that was never made. After the success of Charlie's Angels (1976), producer Barney Rosenzweig bought an adapted version of the script as a possible series. Preparing the script took many years because the networks believed there was no audience for a realistic program about female detectives.
- #009
Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless appeared as guest stars on each other's later programs. Gless appeared in Maxine Interrupted (2003) as an old classmate of Daly's character Maxine. Tyne Daly appeared in Burn Notice (2007) as a clerk who befriends Gless's character Madelin Westen in the third-season episode A Dark Road (2010).
- #010
After a shaky start in its first season, the series became a major worldwide hit for Orion television, because the concept of two strong female leads in a police drama appealed to many female and male viewers. The series also inspired many young women in the United States to join the police force.
- #011
When the series began, Sidney Clute was 65 years old, well past the age at which a detective like himself could retire.
- #012
Lieutenant Albert Samuels was played by Al Waxman, whose birth name was Albert Samuel Waxman.
- #013
The series came close to cancellation in its early days because of its low ratings. After protests from viewers, however, the CBS network realized the show had a strong and loyal female audience. There was also a significant increase in applications from young women who identified with the characters to join the police force, and media reviews tended to be positive once the Sharon Gless/Tyne Daly pairing was established. The series also began selling well abroad, becoming prime time TV in many countries with a strong female following. The show aired for 7 seasons and was eventually cancelled after CBS kept changing its schedule and viewers drifted away.
- #014
Although the series is set in New York, exterior scenes were mostly shot in Los Angeles. This is quite obvious, since many scenes were filmed in some run-down neighborhoods of downtown Los Angeles used to imitate Manhattan. Also, when the Laceys moved into their home in the Fresh Meadow area of Queens, it is clear that the neighborhood they moved to looks like nothing in Queens, but rather resembles Los Angeles suburban neighborhoods. Throughout the series, the characters would occasionally travel to New York to film some exterior shots to be used in later episodes.
- #015
Cagney's and Lacey's badge numbers, as seen in the opening title sequence, are 73D and 763. In some episodes, however, Cagney's badge number is 790 and Lacey's is 340.
- #016
Four TV films starring Gless and Daly were made and broadcast in the mid-1990s, the last of them in 1996. In 2018, CBS had a pilot made for a reboot of the series. Sarah Drew and Michelle Hurd were cast in the two lead roles, but after watching the pilot the network ultimately decided not to order the full series.
- #017
John Karlen, who played Mary Beth Lacey's husband Harvey, portrayed Willie Loomis on the 1960s gothic soap opera "Dark Shadows." His friend Kathryn Leigh Scott, whom he met on "Dark Shadows," appeared in a small guest role in an episode of "Cagney & Lacey."
- #018
The license plate on their bronze Dodge is 437BLA.
- #019
Although they were very well matched as a married couple, John Karlen was 13 years older than Tyne Daly.
- #020
For an unknown reason, neither of two episodes of the season is freely available on digital media.
- #021
Cagney & Lacey was also a novel by Serita Stevens (and yes, that is her real name). She has also written several gothic thriller novels as well as numerous historical and contemporary romance novels.
Continue through the archive
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- IMDb IMDb kaydı
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work