The Sweeney

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. It stars John Thaw as Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as his partner, Detective Sergeant George Carter. It was produced by the Thames Television subsidiary Euston Films for broadcast on the ITV network in the UK between 2 January 1975 and 28 December 1978. The programme's title comes from the real-world Cockney rhyming slang nickname "Sweeney Todd" used to refer to the Flying Squad by London's criminal fraternity in the mid 20th century. The popularity of the series in the UK led to two feature films, Sweeney! (1977) and Sweeney 2 (1978), both starring Thaw and Waterman, and a later film, The Sweeney (2012), starring Ray Winstone as Regan and Ben Drew as Carter. Background The Sweeney was developed from a one-off TV drama entitled Regan which served as the pilot episode for the series. Regan is a 90-minute television film written by Ian Kennedy Martin for the Thames Television anthology series Armchair Cinema (see Armchair Theatre) in 1974. The part of Jack Regan was written for John Thaw, who was a friend of Ian Kennedy Martin, with whom he had worked on the TV drama series Redcap in the 1960s. Dennis Waterman was cast after his performance in the Special Branch episode "Stand and Deliver", also produced by Euston Films.