Hill Street Blues' Davenport & Bates

Host Cynthia Bemis Abrams provides the long overdue look at the primary women characters of Emmy award-winning series "Hill Street Blues." Characters Lucy Bates (uniformed police officer) played by Betty Thomas and Joyce Davenport (confident public defender) provided moral and ethical voice in arcs and story lines that were otherwise the precursor to police procedural dramas. Cynthia notes the two women characters were rarely in same scene and never garnered many lines or airtime each week, yet influenced women to pursue careers in law enforcement and the law.