Wonder Woman
From 1975 to 1977, Lynda Carter played the iconic female superhero on broadcast television, in a portrayal that has remained the only successful live-action depiction of the character, until Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice is released in 2016. The Amazon Warrior Princess rescued Major Steve Trevor (Lyle Waggoner) after his plane crashed into her homeland of Paradise Island, and she escorted him back to America. There, she learned of the fight against Nazi forces and assumed the alternate identity of Diana Prince, Navy Yeoman Petty Officer First Class, in order to stay undetected, and effectively help win the war.
The impact of the arrival of Wonder Woman on television cannot be overstated. In a genre of the medium that had hitherto been dominated by her male counterparts – Batman and Superman – Wonder Woman finally got the adaptation she deserved to bring her to a mass audience.
Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey
American television was dominated from 1982 to 1988 by the TV show Cagney And Lacey – a show about two female characters created by two female writers (Barbara Avedon and Barbara Corday). In this legendary police procedural about two New York City police detectives, Cagney (Sharon Gless) was a single, career-minded woman, and Lacey (Tyne Daly) was a married, career-minded woman with children.
The show saw the characters deal with sexism in the workplace, alcoholism, pregnancy and its impact on a woman’s career, and the impact of a woman’s career on marriage and family. Though the majority of the supporting cast were male characters, Cagney And Lacey was notable for the fact that it regularly depicted women conversing about subjects that neither revolved around, nor involved men, in addition to delivering two complex, well written female characters that were fully capable and talented in their field.
In an unprecedented run of Emmy success, the award for Best Lead Actress in a Drama was won by either Daly or Gless for six consecutive years – a powerhouse female partnership, the like of which has rarely been seen since.
Ellen Morgan
It is rare for a female sitcom character to have a cultural impact beyond a change of hairstyle, or the radical fact that she is unmarried, but Ellen Morgan – played by Ellen DeGeneres in the show Ellen – was one such character. She arrived onscreen in 1994 as a thirty-something single woman, sharing an apartment with her college buddy, and working in a bookstore.
Over the course of five seasons, this independent woman bought the bookstore she worked in, bought her own home, and went through the process of publicly announcing her homosexuality – something that involved deft depiction of self-acceptance, courage and the shock of previously close friends. Moreover, the off-screen furore that surrounded the season four episode revealing the character’s sexuality arguably did more to highlight the institutional prejudice that existed in television and society at that time than any other show had achieved in years.
