Heart of Gless

Gless says female viewers really respond to the show's plot lines about the wronged — but resilient — woman on her own. ''It's amazing how much feedback I've gotten from women I know who have been left by men for young girls,'' she says. ''I want women to see that Rosie survives without hating men — I don't play a man-hater. I told Barney, 'You don't win by making men the opponent.' This is episodic TV — Rosie can't go around screaming how men s--- on her. But I don't want to play a loser...Rosie's not a wuss.''

But Rosenzweig contends he has to bow to some less-than-liberated network attitudes. ''I make adjustments in the show I wouldn't have to make if Sharon were a man,'' he says. ''The people paying for the show are white men...I have to talk to Sharon and say, 'Don't be so strident.' I don't know that I'd be asked to say that to Tom Selleck.''

The ratings have so far been impressive. In a season in which few rookie series have made much of a mark, Rosie held its own against ABC's Monday Night Football and is CBS' second-highest-rated new show; 63 percent of its audience is female.

And Gless has won critical raves for her portrayal of a strong but vulnerable woman. At the start of every episode, in a Scenes From a Marriage twist suggested by Gless, Rosie pours her bruised heart out to her off-camera therapist (played by Rosenzweig in what he calls his ''Hitchcockian kind of thing'' — he also appeared on a subway train in the opening of Cagney). In another bit featured in each show, Rosie, a gloriously compulsive closet eater, digs into greasy Chinese-food containers or a dripping ice-cream carton.

It's the sort of obsessive behavior Cagney might have commiserated about with Lacey — but Rosie is very much a show about going it alone. Though she is quick to compliment her costars — Dorian Harewood as Rosie's hard-edged officemate, Ron Rifkin as her liberal boss, and Lisa Banes as her sister — Gless works without a partner, which means she appears in every scene.

''There's good news and bad news,'' Gless says. ''Sometimes it's easier to carry a show alone. I do miss Tyne very much. But you're constantly aware of the other person. If she goes one way, you deliberately go the other to make the scene more interesting. The bad thing here is that you don't have anyone to share the work with.'' (Daly will, however, make a guest appearance on the show in February.)

Rosie cocreator and head writer Beth Sullivan says, ''There were lots of pressures to give her a Lacey. This is the first time a woman has carried a drama that's not a genre show like a cop show or murder mystery. Any time anyone told us we need a costar, we told him — especially him — that Sharon could do it.''

Gless herself never seemed to entertain any doubts about that. After a grueling 14-hour day on the set, she goes into her custom-made trailer and changes into shorts and a faded blue T-shirt. On its front is this message: ''Age and Treachery Will Always Overcome Youth and Skill.'' ''That,'' says Gless with a laugh, ''is my philosophy.'' That, and the sense of humor that comes with it, seems to be serving her well.