An actor might be replaced in a television
series due to schedule conflicts, lackluster chemistry, behind-the-scenes politics, or even death. Forgotten or not,
there’s drama behind the curtain! It's New York City in the early '80s.
Christine Cagney is a modern single woman and a former fashion model, raised
in a comfortable middle-class home. Mary Beth Lacey is a no-nonsense working mom from the
neighborhood. Together they are beat-stylin’ cops. They patrol the mean streets of Midtown Manhattan
while fighting against institutional sexism in their own ranks. Cagney and Lacey had a passionate
fan base that twice saved it from cancellation. "These your women? Macy and–" "Lacey, sir." "Cagney, Inspector." Stars Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless dominated
the Lead Actress Emmy category for the entire six-year run of the series. But Gless
wasn't the first actress cast as Cagney, or even the second. The series began with a TV
movie starring Daly and M*A*S*H* star Loretta Swit. When Swit was unavailable for the show,
Meg Foster was cast in her place. But after six episodes, Gless took over the part. In a
wide-ranging 2008 interview, series producer Barney Rosenzweig revealed the reason for
Foster's departure was one of compatibility: her performance was too similar to what
Daly was creating as Lacey. He explained, "It became Lacey and Lacey." At the time of the recasting, however,
Rosenzweig gave a much different rationale when interviewed by TV Guide: that viewers found
Foster not feminine enough, and that together she and Daly read as lesbians — an apparently
distasteful situation to viewers in 1982. "If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them,
maybe YOU can hire the A-Team!" So goes the famous opening narration of The
A-Team, super-producer Stephen J. Cannell's 1980s action series about a quartet of
Vietnam vets who work as mercenaries in the Los Angeles underground, taking the kinds
of suicide missions that no one else is bold or crazy enough to accept. The series stars '60s
leading man George Peppard as "Hannibal" Smith, the leader of the group, Dwight Schultz
as pilot "Howlin' Mad" Murdock, Rocky III breakout star Mr. T as all B.A. Baracus –
the B.A. stands for "Bad Attitude" -- and Battlestar Galactica star Dirk Benedict
as master of disguise, "Faceman" Peck. But the first time around, "Faceman" had
a different face altogether. In the show's pilot episode, Peck is played by Love Boat
star Tim Dunigan. The issue with Dunigan, appropriately enough, was his face. Though
technically old enough to have served in Vietnam, it was decided that, in Dunigan's own words,
he was "too young and too tall" for the role. Benedict, who apparently had been Cannell
and co-creator Frank Lupo's first choice, was cast and played the part
for the rest of the series. The Law & Order franchise is no stranger
to inventive solutions for temporarily unavailable cast members. Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit premiered in 1999, the first franchise spinoff. The series
follows the dedicated detectives of the sex crimes-focused Special Victims Unit and
delves further into the personal lives of its leads than the original show ever does.
This is especially true for Mariska Hargitay as Detective Olivia Benson and Christopher
Meloni as her volatile partner, Elliot Stabler. In 2006, it was announced that Hargitay was
taking a short leave of absence from the show to accommodate the final months of her pregnancy.
In her place, the show brought in Connie Nielsen as Detective Dani Beck, partnering her with
Stabler for a six-episode run in the middle of Season 8. Her character was clearly meant to
be temporary. Still, some fans weren't pleased by her presence. In a 2020 interview, Nielsen
said she still gets Dani Beck hate mail. Tony Shaloub's "defective detective" in the comedy
series Monk was always socially awkward with a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Various
flashbacks through the seasons and a visit from his brother confirm that his conditions were
always present within him. But the moment that turned his life upside down to the point that he
had to leave the San Francisco Police Department and hire a nurse to assist him was his wife’s
death. His wife, Trudy, was murdered by car bomb. Monk begins after Trudy's death,
but the mystery surrounding it is the show's primary ongoing story,
reaching from the first episode all the way to the last. In the first two
seasons, Trudy, played by Stellina Rusich, is represented by a few silent flashbacks
and photographs on Monk's mantle. Starting with Season 3's flashback-heavy episode, "Mr. Monk and the Game Show," however, Trudy
is played in flashbacks by Melora Hardin, an actress probably best known for
playing Jan Levinson in The Office. "I have to thank you for that other thing,
too. You know. Marrying me. Oh look." "You're welcome." Hardin would appear a few more times, most
notably in the two-part series finale where her murder is finally solved. Oddly, as the series
went on, the props department used photos of both Rusich and Hardin interchangeably, and even
sat them next to each other in Monk's house. Generational trauma is at the heart of
David Chase's landmark series The Sopranos, the HBO mob drama that in many ways
revolutionized television, opening the medium up to a more mature, serialized mode of
storytelling. Tony Soprano is a New Jersey mob boss who is profoundly depressed and dissatisfied
with his life in ways that he can't articulate. Much of his trauma can be traced back
to his mother Livia and Uncle Junior, as well as the ghost of his father,
Johnny Boy. Beginning with Season 2, Tony's wayward sister Janice arrives on the scene.
She's dealt with their tumultuous upbringing by moving west and embracing new age philosophies,
but can't help but get drawn back into their life. Tony and Janice aren't the only Soprano siblings, however. There's one more — a little
sister who got out and stayed out, Barbara, played in a handful of episodes
in Season 2 by Nicole Burdette. Barbara lives out of town and is rarely involved
with the Soprano family business. The character is absent from Season 4, then returns for
ten episodes in the show's last two seasons, this time played by Danielle Di Vecchio. Even with
her increased presence in the series' final run, Barbara was never a major character, and her
role was by far the smallest in the family. NBC's Hannibal, based on the
bestselling novels by Thomas Harris, was unlike any show on network
television. Baroque, gorgeous, and gruesome, series creator Bryan Fuller
crafted a bloody thriller for three seasons that was beautiful to watch, even if
you were watching through your fingers. "This is the nightmare that
followed him out of his dreams." Centered around haunted FBI profiler
Will Graham and his psychiatrist, the erudite gourmet Hannibal Lecter, the series
follows Graham's attempts to catch various serial killers and protect his own fragile sanity,
while Lecter works to keep Graham and his FBI boss Jack Crawford from discovering that he
is a brutal, cannibalistic killer himself. Season 2 works in elements
from Harris's sequel, Hannibal, introducing meatpacking heiress Margot Verger
and her sadistic, incestuous brother Mason, played by Michael Pitt. Hannibal punishes
Mason for his abuse of Margot and for his general impoliteness by drugging him and forcing
him to mutilate and eat his own face. In Season 3, Mason returns for revenge, paralyzed from
the neck down and horribly disfigured. "I would like you to begin arrangements
for Dr. Hannibal Lecter to be eaten alive." But the actor underneath the prosthetics
is not Pitt, but actor Joe Anderson, as Pitt declined to return
to the role after Season 2. Premiering on NBC the same year as Hannibal with
a somewhat similar premise was The Blacklist. James Spader stars as Raymond "Red" Reddington, a
master criminal who's evaded capture for decades. Reddington turns himself in to the FBI
in exchange for immunity, promising to help the Bureau track down the world's most
dangerous criminals: his "blacklist." But, of course, there's a catch. Reddington will
only work with rookie profiler Elizabeth Keen. While the series has a "case of the week"
structure with Red and Keen bringing down one illegal operation or another, the
central mystery of Reddington's true identity and his connection to Liz power
the show through ten high-intrigue seasons. A major clue to the mystery of
both Red and Liz's backgrounds dropped with the introduction of Brian
Dennehy's character, Dominic Wilkerson, in Season 3. As a former KGB agent posing as
a retired "systems analyst," Dom has a long, messy history with Red, one that somehow
intersects with Liz's own background. After a handful of appearances through the
years, Dom becomes integral to the show's ongoing storyline in Season 7. But producers were
thrown a tragic curveball when Dennehy passed away in April 2020. Rather than rework the upcoming
season's scripts, the powers that be decided to recast the role with actor Ron Raines, who
played Dom for three episodes in Season 8. Sometimes a show recasts a role
due to the death of an actor, but, other times, it's due to the death of the
show itself. That was the case with All Rise, the CBS courtroom drama that premiered in 2019, in
which Simone Missick starred as Lola Carmichael, a former prosecutor turned Los
Angeles County's newest judge. "I've been in court before.
I know how this works." "You think you know, but you don't. Not yet." The series followed the ins
and outs of her daily caseload, as well as the lives of the men and women who
worked at the courthouse: her fellow judges, her old prosecutor colleagues, clerks,
bailiffs, reporters, and more. Lola's husband, FBI agent Robin Taylor, was played for
the first two seasons by Todd Williams. The show was canceled by CBS in May 2021.
Several months later, however, it was saved from oblivion by the Oprah Winfrey Network, and
a third and final season aired on OWN in 2022. "Instead of asking the cop why I was being ziptied,
you asked me what I did wrong." Season 3 took place a year after the events of
Season 2, which saw Lola have a baby and lose her judgeship after defending an innocent woman
from arrest. Most of the original cast returned for the final season, with the exception
of Williams, who had booked the Amazon YA series Panic. As result, actor Christian
Keyes took over as Robin for Season 3. Each season of the Breaking Bad prequel,
Better Call Saul, begins with an enigmatic black-and-white sequence following the
gray, paranoid life of Jimmy McGill, formerly known as New Mexico criminal lawyer
Saul Goodman, now living as Cinnabon manager Gene Takovic after the explosive events
of the final season of Breaking Bad. Starting in Season 3, however, those opening
scenes coalesce into an ongoing story as a panic attack puts Gene in the hospital. Season 4 begins
with Gene's cab ride back from the hospital, where his driver has an Albuquerque Isotopes
decal on his mirror and keeps shooting glances at his passenger. Season 5 reveals that
the driver, Jeff, played by Don Harvey, does indeed recognize Gene as Saul,
but his motivations remain unclear. The sixth and final season forgoes the
black-and-white scenes until the final three episodes, where Gene decides not to run
again, but to confront Jeff and neutralize him via an old-fashioned Slippin' Jimmy con game.
For these final episodes, however, Harvey was not available due to his commitment to the HBO series
We Own This City. Pat Healy stepped into the role. "Jeffie, this is Mr. Takovic." "Call me Gene." Harvey's original take had a hint of menace,
while Healy's was more of a sad sack divorceé, living with his mother and desperate for
a taste of the Saul Goodman lifestyle. Law & Order and its spinoffs have had
no shortage of cast turnover over the decades since its 1990 premiere. Part
of that is baked into the premise of the show. Detectives and attorneys
come in and out on a regular basis, and the departures are explained by
transfer, retirement, arrest, or even death. The eras of the show come to be defined by
who's running the two separate but equally important groups in the criminal justice
system. Seasons 4 through 6 encompass Jill Hennessy's turn as Assistant
District Attorney Claire Kincaid. "A search warrant? With
this? You can't be serious." Toward the end of Hennessy's run on the show,
she appeared in character as Kincaid on a 1996 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street.
While it's not exactly a Law & Order spinoff, it existed in the same television
universe and occasionally shared characters, most memorably Richard
Belzer's Detective John Munch. Filming Homicide on location in Baltimore, however, meant that Hennessy missed a few
days of filming the Season 6 Law & Order episode "Corpus Delicti". Luckily, she
had a novel solution to this problem: her identical twin sister Jacqueline could step in
as Kincaid for a few background courtroom shots.
