The Sweeney
| The Sweeney | |
|---|---|
The Sweeney opening titles (series 1–3).
|
|
| Created by | Ian Kennedy Martin |
| Starring |
John Thaw Dennis Waterman Garfield Morgan |
| Theme music composer | Harry South |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 4 |
| No. of episodes | 53 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 50 minutes |
| Production company(s) |
Euston Films Ltd Thames Television |
| Distributor | Fremantle Media |
| Budget | £266,000 per episode |
| Release | |
| Original network | ITV |
| Original release | 2 January 1975 – 28 December 1978 |
The Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London. The programme's title derives from Sweeney Todd, which is Cockney rhyming slang for "Flying Squad".
The programme was shot on 16mm film by Thames Television's film division, Euston Films. It originally broadcast on ITV between the 2nd January 1975 and the 28th December 1978 at 21:00–22:00 weekday (usually Monday), with repeated screenings at the same time until the early 1980s. It starred John Thaw as Detective Inspector Jack Regan, and Dennis Waterman as his partner, Detective Sergeant George Carter. Such was its popularity in the UK, it spawned two cinema released feature film length spin-offs, Sweeney! and Sweeney 2.
The series was created by writer Ian Kennedy Martin, brother of the better-known Troy Kennedy Martin who wrote several of the episodes and co-wrote the second film. It was born from a one-off TV drama, entitled Regan, a 90-minute made-for-TV movie which Ian Kennedy Martin wrote for Thames Television's Armchair Cinema series in 1974. The part of Regan was specifically written for Thaw, who was by this time a friend of Kennedy Martin, with whom he'd worked on the TV drama series Redcap in the 1960s.
From the very beginning, the show was seen as having series potential. After Regan scored highly in the ratings, work began on the development of the series proper. Ian Kennedy Martin's idea was for the series to be mainly studio-based, with more dialogue and less action, but producer Ted Childs disagreed, and in consequence Ian Kennedy Martin parted company with the project. Childs produced it on film, not videotape, so making it possible to shoot it almost entirely on location using 16 mm film (which gave it a startling degree of realism), and to use film editing techniques, enabling him to give the show a heavy bias toward action sequences.
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