GUEST POST Shut it! Two words of advice from Jack Regan

Peter Chambers doesn't want any Barney Rubble as he looks forward to owning some television history.

tl;dr – Series One of The Sweeney is shortly to be released on Blu-Ray.

More – Initially in 4:3 with original ad-breaks, later in 16:9 continuous, somehow.

Any mention of the 2012 shambles – Shut it!

To describe The Sweeney as iconic would be a damp British understatement. It drew a line under what had gone before – Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, and Softly Softly – and then threw the book away.

It did this using a small team of ‘guerilla film-makers’ at Euston Films, a subsidiary of Thames. Directors such as Douglas Camfield – who made Inferno for Dr Who – were given 10 shooting days and £40,000 budget to go out on location in London in small teams carrying 16 mm equipment and using the background they found. 

Producer Ted Childs created the role of Jack Regan for John Thaw and picked writers such as Ian Kennedy Martin to provide the outstanding scripts. Much of the action happens in pubs, where the characters consume unbelievable amounts of alcohol and smoke like chimneys.

The dense use of London criminal slang changed crime writing forever after. Many later shows pay obvious homage – Endeavour is replete with seemingly linked references. Swapping the Ford Granada for an Audi Quattro – and adding SF – gives Ashes to Ashes. Swapping the genders of lead characters, and shifting to Manchester gives Scott and Bailey (“Ours not to reason why. Ours just to catch the bastards.”). Moving the Jags from the villains to the cops, and re-locating to Oxford is the obvious evolution to Morse – losing the London lager and gaining real-ale. Your round George.

Now I am sure I had fifty quid around here somewhere…

Peter Chambers is a Liberal Democrat member from Hampshire.