TARDIS Dude here,
If a movie adaptation of this series was eventually greenlighted, these would my choices regarding the two leads and the director.
Cagney & Lacey
Director - Martin Campbell
Mary Beth Lacey - Melanie Lynskey
Christine Cagney - Elisabeth Harnois
Regards,
TARDIS Dude.
How about Carrie Anne Moss as Cagney and Gillian Anderson and Lacy? How about Cathrine Hardwicke as the director?
shareYUUUUUUUUCKKKKKK!!!!! No, sorry, I canNOT see anyone replacing Sharon and Tyne. I looked at the other actresses pictures and nuuuhhhh-uhhhh, all of them are WAY TOO THIN, WAY TOO UNNATURALLY PRETTY (Mary Beth does have a beautiful face, but her face is natural with thick real brows, full versatile lips, and has a next-door neighbor look, not a painted store mannequin look; in addition, she's realistically plump) and look more like plastic store mannequins than real, down to earth women. In addition, they lack the strong brows and vivid real facial expressions that made Chris and Mary Beth so approachable and touching. EWWWWW.
I am glad that they did not do this in any of the four re-union movies at all. I say let the women age naturally; I loved that they got realistically fatter and more wrinkled with age and that Mary Beth's hair began to turn gray and I think Chris was wearing glasses. I can totally see Chris' hair being next and her light hair turning completely and beautifully silver.
One thing I notice now, esp. as I am watching the first season on DVD...when the re-union movies came out in the 1990's and I compare those with the series, I notice to me delight that Chris and Mary Beth seem much more relaxed and freer and less burden.
Sure, they still have their trials and problems (Harvey's heart attack and Chris's brief and heartbreaking marriage with that cheating creep Burton or somebody), but they seem freer and even stronger than in the original series.
I think this is largely because during the 1980's series, both Chris and Mary Beth were under enormous pressure, esp. during the anti-feminist backlash and the fact that they were the only two women in precinct 14 and the sexist attitudes were much more pervasive back then.
I got the feeling that both Chris and Mary Beth seemed to be much more guarded and appeared to have to constantly watch their backs, which I am sure made it extremely stressful for them.
With the 1990's and the end of the Reagan/Bush oppression on the States, and the start of the Clinton era and the ushering in of more progressive attitudes as well as more women joining the NYPD and most of the original unwelcoming male co-workers gone, we saw the pressure on Chris and Mary Beth ease up quite a lot. As a result, Chris and Mary Beth were freer to truly let their genuine streetwise feminist selves out, esp. Chris.
I just loved Chris's Kiss my Irish a$$ line near the end; I think in the 1980's series, Chris might have been too stressed and oppressed to say that line. Did anyone else notice this difference?
And anyway, wonderful as the series and the movies were, I would not want to see it go on indefinitely; a good series has to know when to have a closure.
If there was a film (big-screen film, not a TV film) made, I'd want the original cast all back and Barbara Corday and Barney Rosenzweig as directors, not some new director.
I had an idea of a plotlet for another re-union big-screen film...Chris and Mary Beth are still on the force, but now that they're older, they have more desk work, although they still investigate cases and interview witnesses.
Mary Beth is around 58 and is widowed; Chris is 61. All three of Mary Beth's kids are now grown...Harve Junior is close to his 40th birthday and has a long-time on and off girlfriend and they have a ten-year-old daughter. Both Harve Junior and his girlfriend work for the city under the human resources division.
Micheal is in his mid-thirties, married, and has three kids, two sons and a daughter. His wife is a high school teacher; Micheal works for the state of New York.
Alice Lacey isn't married, doesn't have kids yet, is around 27 and is a police officer for NYC just like her mother was years ago.
A big part of the plot would be that poor Harve Junior is battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and needs a transplant from a healthy lymph system to be cured. Maybe Mary Beth is the one who donates it.
Meanwhile, Harve first goes thru lots, esp. with chemo...he keeps most of his dark hair (so much like Mary Beth's), but he has nausea, is very, very cold body-wise, and gets some infections, mainly in his spleen which becomes inflamed and very, very painful and has to be removed at one point. His head hurts often and he has bouts of depression.
And since Mary Beth also has had cancer, she understands what her oldest son is going thru. Mary Beth is very frightened for her son and has lots of terrible nightmares that autumn.
Alice, meanwhile, is struggling thru her first few years as a policewoman...things are better for women now and she's not the lone woman there, thank goodness, but some guys still give the women a hard time and for a while, Alice lacks confidence in herself.
But then, Alice and several other women solve a big case and save several lives in the process and gain confidence and also the respect of the precinct.
I think I'll also have Chris's niece Bridget in there. Perhaps Chris and Bridget are really close and Chris's brother feels threatened by it and is jealous, but he can't do much now that Bridget is long grown. By then, Brian's been divorce twice. Brian and Chris still bicker whenever they speak. Bridget is pretty much on the outs with her dad also.
Maybe with Micheal and his wife, the oldest son is close to puberty and maybe gets into trouble with school vandalism or something. Haven't ironed out the details of that one.
Still have to think of a case Mary Beth and Chris would be working on also.
So, what do you all think? Anyone else have any film plot ideas?
Good ideas, but, unless we want to keep them young, they would be much older than 58 and 61. Both Mary Beth and Chris would be retired by now. I think they were supposed to be the same age on the series and even if they were, they would be 65, which is what Tyne Daly is now. Sharon Gless is 68.
Not too many ideas, but, maybe Isibecki (sp?) and Chris would be together now, maybe not married but living together. Petrie could be at a higher rank and close to retirement. Samuels is dead as is the actor.
Either that, or, Isibecki could come back in some other capacity, and Chris's old boyfriend Dori could come back into her life after his wife died, assuming he has kicked the drug habit for good.
There could also be a cross-over to Law and Order, SVU because Harvey Atkin, who played Coleman, one of the former detectives from Cagney and Lacey now occasionally plays a judge on SVU, albeit a different character name.
Also, if Harvey is dead, then Mary Beth could have a new love interest, I am not sure who that would be though. The only name that came to mind was Brian Dennehy. He could play an elderly widower who lived near Mary Beth and they became close after Harvey died.
Tyne Daly and John Karlen had amazing chemistry. They seemed like a real life married, realistic, working class couple who were really in love and not obsessed with having their partner be at an ideal weight. They complemented each other physically too.
Good ideas, but, unless we want to keep them young, they would be much older than 58 and 61. Both Mary Beth and Chris would be retired by now. I think they were supposed to be the same age on the series and even if they were, they would be 65, which is what Tyne Daly is now. Sharon Gless is 68.
Not too many ideas, but, maybe Isbecki and Chris would be together now, maybe not married but living together. Petrie could be at a higher rank and close to retirement. Samuels is dead as is the actor.
Either that, or, Isbecki could come back in some other capacity, and Chris's old boyfriend Dori could come back into her life after his wife died, assuming he has kicked the drug habit for good.
There could also be a cross-over to Law and Order, SVU because Harvey Atkin, who played Coleman, one of the former detectives from Cagney and Lacey now occasionally plays a judge on SVU, albeit a different character name.
Also, if Harvey is dead, then Mary Beth could have a new love interest, I am not sure who that would be though. The only name that came to mind was Brian Dennehy. He could play an elderly widower who lived near Mary Beth and they became close after Harvey died.
Tyne Daly and John Karlen had amazing chemistry. They seemed like a real life married, realistic, working class couple who were really in love and not obsessed with having their partner be at an ideal weight. They complemented each other physically too.
You're probably right about their ages; true, they wouldn't stay young forever; that wouldn't be good.
Maybe Chris at least would be getting ready to retire. She would be the kind of person who'd volunteer after retirement. Maybe she’d retire right before Christmas.
But yuck, Chris and Isbecki? No way would those two fall in love or wind up together; those two were usually like oil and water; I laugh remembering the sparring matches they had, esp. when Isbecki would tease both Chris and Mary Beth.
But yeah, maybe it would be good to have Marcus and Claudia appear in some parts also; they'd have two grown daughters by then and maybe be grandparents.
Perhaps Chris and Mary Beth would run into the Petries at a restaurant or something and wind up eating together and catching up. The Petries could even offer emotional support for Mary Beth and Harve Junior as he goes thru his cancer treatment.
I wouldn’t have either Isbecki or Dori in this re-union film at all; I think the only ones who’d appear from the past are the Petries and Chris and Mary Beth and their families. So, Coleman wouldn’t in here either.
I don’t care for the idea of Mary Beth getting a new lover too soon after she’s lost Harvey; I think a large part of her is still grieving and she would not rush into another relationship too soon, esp. since she’s dealing with Harve Junior’s cancer.
So let’s leave off Brian Dennehy or any new lover for Mary Beth for a long while. Mary Beth still cries when she goes thru Harvey Senior’s things. But I’d have her find a last love letter from Harvey Senior letting her know how much she’s loved.
I agree, Tyne and John were great together; I just loved the whole lovely Lacey family; I loved their kids also. They did an excellent job picking the actors who played the kids; Tony LaTorre really did look like he was related to Tyne, so it was so easy to tell that Mary Beth and Harve Junior were true mother and son.
I also loved the beautiful marriage Mary Beth and Harvey Senior had; they loved each other just as is and I liked that both were a little chubby. Their marriage was so wonderful, which is why Mary Beth would not be so anxious to be with another man too soon after Harvey.
I liked that Mary Beth and Harve had the same body gestures. I always laugh out loud when I watch the scene in Burn Out when Mary Beth is scolding her son for getting into trouble at school and she’s pointing her finger at her son and Harve Junior points his finger out also and Mary Beth, not realizing her finger is pointed, shouts at her son, Don’t you point that finger at me, young man!
So in my story, I have the now almost-40 year old Harve Junior having lots of the same bubbly, chatty, emotional personality as his mother. And both Harve Junior and Mary Beth do lots of crying in this film.
I don’t know if Chris would be dating anyone; she was pretty badly burned by that Burton creep cheating on her; she might still be healing from that. Maybe she might be seeing a guy on and off, but it would be a new character, not somebody from the series and definitely NOT Isbecki.
I think maybe the plot around Chris would be partially about her now middle-aged niece Bridget. Bridget would be probably divorced, have a daughter (Chris would be a great-aunt then), and would be a film director or producer. Maybe Chris would sit in on one of the film screenings.
And perhaps the film would end at maybe that New Year’s Eve with all of them having some kind of celebration, maybe at Chris’s apartment…Harve Junior would be working again part-time and would be recovering thanks to the cell transplant from Mary Beth; Alice would be moving up in the NYCPD; Michael and his wife and kids would be there also, so would Bridget and her daughter.
So, that would be my idea of a film…and it would be a big-screen theater film, not a TV film; I’d always wanted to see Mary Beth and Chris on the big screen. Mary Beth would be even heavier and rounder; her hair would be short and gray and her eyelids would be heavy, but her face would still be gorgeous.
Chris would also be fat; her hair would be solid silver, long and straight, she’d have round wire-rimmed glasses most of the time, and her brows would be thicker and more moveable than ever. Both women would of course have lots more wrinkles with age, but they’d look great as real women.
Oh, and here’s a link to a sort of re-union story of Cagney and Lacey I started if you want to read and review it…
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7513623/1/Autumns_Advance
Here's some of the cast of the five main characters if a film was made today...and it would be a big-screen theater film, not a TV film...
Christine Cagney - Sharon Gless
Mary Beth Lacey - Tyne Daly
Harve Lacey Junior - Nick Kiriazis
Micheal Lacey - Robert Dioguardi
Alice Christine Lacey - Amanda Richer
What do you all think?
Mary Beth Lacey - Ben Stiller
Christine Cagney - Owen Wilson
But seriously....
Mary Beth Lacey - Toni Collette
Christine Cagney - Maria Bello
I think they would be perfect for a Cagney and Lacey film.
Maria Bello would be a good Cagney.
I think Carrie Anne Moss would be a good Lacey. They are good friends in real life so the chemistry would be there.
Although Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson would be a close second. With Will Farrall as Harvey.
Haha, Will Ferrel would be excellent as Harvey.... or better still as Isbecki:-)
shareLOL! Will Ferrell would make a good Isbecki. I can see Sara Ramirez (Callie on Grey's Anatomy) play Lacey as she reminds me a lot of a young Tyne Daly. Maria Bello would be a good Cagney, but I can also see KaDee Strickland (Charlotte on Private Practice) play her as well.
shareI wouldn't put Isbecki in the re-union film; he'd be long gone from their lives by then. I think just about the only character from the series from precinct 14 who would appear briefly would be the Petries.
And the film would be on the big-screen, not on TV. Anyone else imagine who would play Mary Beth's now-grown kids and possibly Bridget, who would also be approaching middle age?
Anyone have any interesting film plot ideas...like what the three grown kids would be doing for a living, if any of them would be married, which ones would have kids of their own, if any of them would even be divorced yet?