Susan Saint James, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 80, was a major star on US television for two decades, shooting to worldwide fame alongside Rock Hudson in the police drama McMillan & Wife and playing one of two divorced single mums in the female “odd couple” sitcom Kate & Allie.

Saint James was cast as McMillan’s wife, Sally, after being spotted in a 1970 episode of another crime series, McCloud, playing a police officer on the trail of a serial killer. The role of Stewart McMillan, or “Mac”, a debonair San Francisco police commissioner, was Hudson’s first in a TV series after more than two decades as a movie heart-throb in Hollywood’s so-called golden age, alongside sex symbols such as Gina Lollobrigida and Doris Day . The husky-voiced Saint James more than held her own in the show, in which she starred for five years from 1971.

Saint James, left, as Kate, and Jane Curtin as Allie in the 1980s sitcom Kate & Allie, about two divorced single mothers who move in together.…