‘Cagney and Lacey’ Reunite 30 Years Later

Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless have reunited 30 years after their hit cop drama Cagney and Lacey ended.

Three decades after their popular drama Cagney and Lacey ended its seven-season run on CBS, actresses Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless, who portrayed the series’ namesake characters, reunited while presenting the Best Soap award at the 2018 British Soap Awards Saturday night, according to The Sun.

The duo, who have both gone on to have successful acting careers since the end of the popular ’80s drama, sat down with Radio Times to recall their time on the 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. So the idea that these women also had lives outside of work was really interesting to play,” Daly said of the series.

“It was because of us that subsequent shows like NYPD Blue were allowed to exist,” Gless said. “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 cop drama to have principal characters who were allowed to be vulnerable.”

While the beloved cop drama had been off the air for three decades, there was recently hope that the series would get a breath of new life after it was announced in January that a reboot of the beloved series had been ordered by CBS, though just months later, on May 11, the network announced that it had passed on the pilot.

The 13-episode reboot, which was set to follow the series’ original premise of two female detectives working in Los Angeles, was a co-production between CBS TV Studios and MGM TV and was written by Bridget Carpenter and directed by Rosemary Rodriguez.

Daly was set to return for the reboot, taking on the role of Phyllis, Phil’s sister, who assumed control of local watering hole Phil’s after his death.

Grey’s Anatomy alum Sarah Drew, who made her exit from the ABC series during season 14, was slated to play the role of LAPD Detective Cagney, Lacey’s nimble and easygoing partner and protégé, while Blindspot veteran Michelle Hurd was set to portray Lacey, an athletic, polished and former high school track and field champion.

During the series’ original run on CBS for seven seasons, it scored two best drama Emmys and six lead actress in a drama series trophies — four for Daly and two for Gless.