Betty Thomas is an American director and actress. She is known for her Emmy Award-winning role as Sergeant Lucy Bates on the television series Hill Street Blues. As of March 2018, Thomas is one of just two directors to have multiple films on the list of seventeen highest-US-grossing female-directed films.

Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC in prime-time from January 15, 1981, to May 12, 1987, for 146 episodes. The show chronicles the lives of the Metropolitan Police Department staff of a single police station located on Hill Street in an unnamed large city, although the opening credits show scenes from the city of Chicago, contrasted with New York City inferences, including: a discussion, at the start of the eighth episode, of the police department running a summer camp for juvenile delinquents in New York's Allegany State Park; a stolen police vehicle being found in the East River in the 11th episode; and a mention, in the 13th episode, that Detective LaRue lives on the Lower East Side. The "blues" are the police officers in their blue uniforms.