Loretta Swit played the role of Christine Cagney in the original television movie, but had to decline the role in the series when the producers of M*A*S*H refused to let her out of her contract. Subsequently, Meg Foster played the role of Cagney when the series first aired as a midseason replacement in the spring of 1982, but was replaced by Sharon Gless in the fall, after 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.
Cagney and Lacey, a U.S. police procedural with pervasive melodramatic overtones is, deservedly, one of the most widely discussed programs in television history.
This was the establishment of Cagney and Lacey as a "cumulative narrative." Unlike serial dramas such as Hill Street Blues, or, in the more strictly melodramatic vein, Dallas, Cagney and Lacey did usually bring each episode to closure.
Thus, as viewers watched the Lacey children move from childhood into adolescence, they also saw strains appear in the Lacey marriage, and the toll that strain took on professional commitments, and the conflicts the strain caused in the interpersonal relationship of the two women, and so on.
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