Written By

David Brown

5:45 PM, 21 November 2011

“Sweat makes good friendship cement,” says Tyne Daly of her relationship with Sharon Gless. The phrase comes from her mother, but Daly admits that it’s a perfect description of the bond that exists between the two actresses, who sweated on screen for six years as Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey.

Thirty years ago, these two trailblazing cops made their debut on US TV and, to mark this anniversary, the BFI is hosting a retrospective on 29 November, where Gless and Daly (along with producer Barney Rosenzweig) will assess the impact of the ground-breaking series.

“Before Cagney and Lacey, we didn’t follow officers home to find out what they did when they took their badges off and emptied their guns,” says Daly. “So the idea that these women also had lives outside of work was really interesting to play.”

“It was because of us that subsequent shows like NYPD Blue were allowed to exist,” reasons Sharon Gless. “That was basically Cagney and Lacey with two men in that it featured male leads who talked about their feelings. NYPD Blue was a great show, but I always thought we did it better. We were the first to have principal characters who were allowed to be vulnerable.”

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2011-11-21/sharon-gless-and-tyne-daly-on-the-30th-anniversary-of-cagney-and-lacey