THE SWEENEY AT 40: BFI Southbank

FORNICATION AND A FIGHT IN THE
FIRST FIVE MINUTES

BFI Southbank, 9 January 2014, 6.20pm

The fortieth anniversary of everyone's favourite 1970s cop show, The Sweeney, was celebrated at the British Film Institute in an evening of film clips, special guests, men with motors and booze. Which is exactly how it should be.

Pix by Lili 'The Lens' Gane.
 
I’ve always had a soft spot for The Sweeney, the ITV series that ran between 1975 and 1978 and starred the late John Thaw, with Dennis Waterman, as hard working and hard living London Flying Squad detectives Jack Regan and George Carter (‘The Sweeney’, from the cockney rhyming slang ‘Sweeney Todd’, meaning ‘Flying Squad’) who, as one wag once wrote, went “into action against violent criminals and willing young women”.  It’s always remained memorable for me, as it was the first adult programme I was allowed to stay up and watch on a regular basis. When it debuted in 1975, almost overnight us kids seemed to go from playing Doctor Who and Thunderbirds to playing London villains versus Regan and co. That was quite a cultural shift for a ten year old, especially as it hurt a lot more.

The Sweeney has never really gone away over the last thirty plus years. That’s partly due to the contracts it was made under being buy outs, common in the film industry, meaning that once the actors and production crew had been paid the TV companies could show the series as many times as they liked. However, the main, important reason was that the way The Sweeney was made by Euston Films (the film making branch of Thames television) was years ahead of time, something it still hasn’t been given enough credit for. Shot 98% in real locations on film by a small, dedicated production team, when The Sweeney was repeated throughout the 1980s and 1990s the TV industry was still catching up with its revolutionary production methods, to the point where all TV drama is now made in the same way. Put on any episode now and, flares and kipper ties aside, you could be watching a modern series. Factor in the show being embraced by 1990s ‘Lad’ culture and the TV nostalgists of the last few years, and The Sweeney has never been far away from the peak of popular culture.

Euston Films reunited: Scriptwriter Roger Marshall,
director Tom Clegg, actor Dennis Waterman, cameraman
John Keeling and producer Ted Childs.

Myself and the show have personal history, too. It was the thing that finally pushed me from wanting to write about TV and entertainment to finally doing it. My friends Mike Kenwood and George Williams had wanted to write a book about The Sweeney for years and, in 1998, incensed that the idea had been nicked by a publisher who shall remain nameless, I lent my graphic design and publishing skills to producing their wonderfully named – by Mike – unofficial guide that we self-published, namely Fags, Slags, Blags and Jags: The Sweeney. (If you’ve got a copy, that’s Mike and George dressed up as blaggers on the front in a photo I took to get round copyright). That opened the floodgates; we met one of The Sweeney writers, Troy Kennedy Martin, at a Cult TV event with a copy of the book under his arm and through him, his brother Ian, creator of the show, together with Trevor Preston who, coming from a similar background to many of the series’ villains, brought such authenticity to the writing. When Fags… proved a cult hit, we were asked to help produce the soundtrack album Shut It! The Music of The Sweeney; by 2002, with me stepping up as co-author, we were working on Sweeney! The Official Companion and interviewing as many of the key players in Euston Films as we could, and Dennis was gracious enough to grant us a long interview and write the foreword. In turn, this led to us researching the questions for the episode commentaries on an Australian DVD release. In 2012, the Official Companion went into a second edition when the Ray Winston big-screen – ahem –  ‘reinterpretation’ of the series debuted. (Like I said, the show’s never really gone away).

So, when the request came from Dick Fiddy at the BFI to help with an evening to celebrate The Sweeney’s 40th anniversary, myself and Mike didn’t need asking twice; helping with contacting people, writing the programme notes, choosing which clips to show and looking after guests on the night was the proverbial busman’s holiday for us. To cap it all, a couple of days before the night of the event we were over the moon to find out that Dennis himself would be appearing on stage alongside producer Ted Childs and director Tom Clegg, who established the “down and dirty” cinematic style of the series.

The Sweeney arrive at the BFI in the only way they can.

Over the last year, the BFI has given its TV events a delightful ‘multi-media’ presentation, which has seen Daleks and the TARDIS appearing in the foyer for the Doctor Who at 50 season, while Patrick McGoohan memorabilia was projected on the big screen in NFT1 during his retrospective, as incidental music from Danger Man played over the PA system. The Sweeney got the same treatment: as the Shut It! soundtrack was given another outing as the audience assembled, key screen grabs from the series succeeded each other on the screen. An extra plus was the appearance of two cars of Sweeney vintage, a Ford Consul GT and a Mark 1 Granada Ghia (I think), one of which had appeared in the show. Lovingly restored by Steve Bennett and Calvin Urwin from The Sweeney fan club – also in the process of making their own fan-film of the show – the two enthusiasts passed on the wonderful news that they’d found Regan’s actual car, which would soon be getting the restoration treatment. Their night was complete when Dennis signed the dashboard of one of the vehicles (apologies for not remembering which one). Also attending were scriptwriter Roger Marshall and cameraman John Keeling, in many ways an unsung hero as he was the man responsible for initially putting the Euston crew together.

The panel: Ted Childs, Tom Clegg, Dennis Waterman
and Dick Fiddy.

The on-stage interview conducted by Dick Fiddy revolved around a selection of clips Dick, Mike and I had broken down to Regan and Carter’s first meeting, through action, drama, humour and Regan’s fractious relationship with his superiors and women. A couple of hiccups with the order of clips aside this proved it to be a good format, setting off memories as amusing as Ted’s belief that each episode should have “fornication and a fight in the first five minutes” and Dennis’s wry comment that one of the Euston cars was so battered that “the villains had to slow down for the Jaguar to catch up.” I was glad Roger was there, as Ted, Dennis and Tom were full of praise for the series’ scripts, complimenting them for “never being rewritten”; in short, “if it wasn’t on the page, it wasn’t on the stage.” It was good, too, to see Dennis’s best dramatic moment in the series, from the story ‘Hit and Run’, where he grieves over the death of his wife – written by Roger – get the admiring applause it so deserved. At the other end of the dramatic scale, Dennis’s drunken duet with John of ‘As Long As It Comes From The Heart’ from 'Visiting Fireman' was equally well received. Pinpointing The Sweeney’s uniqueness among crime shows in one witty comment, Dick observed that there was “very little singing and dancing in Luther.”

You might not have known from the polite and cultured middle aged men on stage, but in their day the Euston Films crew were almost as unconventional and riotous as the series they made. It was good to see Peter ‘Pebbles’ Brayham, the series’ legendary stunt arranger, name checked in story where he persuaded one of the car mechanics to rewire the vehicle of an annoyingly precious actor, so that when he turned on the windscreen wipers, “the car exploded.” Also receiving recognition was the assistant director, cockney rough diamond Bill Westley who, to the amusement of the rest of the team, was arrested for carrying a shotgun during the making of the feature film Sweeney 2. Other tales of Euston anarchy concerned a caterer who ran over a real policeman’s foot, so Ted had to “keep shoving fivers in the orphans’ fund box” in the local police station to assist in getting him released, as well as the Spanish eagle, intended as the quirk of a master villain, which broke loose and started attacking the catering truck.

It’s a cliché, but all human life is there in The Sweeney, conveyed by the pounding, upbeat opening theme tune and the slow, melancholy closing version that accompanies the end credits, so it was a nice touch that the evening began with both versions of the title sequence and ended with the Fourth Series end titles, showing Jack and George wandering around the West End late at night.

Myself and Mike with another satisfied punter.

In the green room afterwards, Dennis, who’d been fairly reserved when he arrived, was smiling a lot and said that he was delighted to have been able taken part. Tom was on fine form too, and you got the feeling he would have happily carried on chatting and drinking red wine all night if Ted hadn’t shepherded him off to a wise meal (that wasn’t before he happily stopped to sign autographs and have his picture taken with delighted fans). Overall, you got the feeling from the three of them that the kind of camaraderie forged on making The Sweeney, together with the delight in making great drama, is something very special to them and will always be worth revisiting.

As for me and Mike, we had a great time: we signed 14 of the 20 Official Companions the BFI shop had, which isn’t bad for a second edition that came out over a year ago. It was all a bit of whirl, as the best events often are, so I’m glad my chum Lili was on hand to record things for posterity. Above all, though, it was a privilege to be involved in such an affectionate celebration of one of our favourite TV series that has influenced crime shows as diverse as the BBC knock-off Target, through to recent hits like Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes and New Tricks. 

I guess if you’re a Sweeney fan, you’re a Sweeney fan for life.

CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR TELEVISION

WHY ISN'T 'DOCTOR WHO' AS GOOD AS 'BREAKING BAD'?
A trawl through festive television, namely Doctor Who, Still Open All Hours and Sherlock, plus Breaking Bad, highlights some interesting points about modern TV.

The rich cast of characters - in more ways than one -
from Breaking Bad. (Image: AMC)

 
 

I didn’t watch much Christmas television. As far as I was concerned there was nothing on. Well, of course there was stuff on, as TV is a 24/7 affair these days, but there wasn't much I wanted to watch. The trouble with TV being a hungry 24-hour medium now is that the same stuff gets recycled again and again (and again and again…). It says a lot that the only thing that all of my family sat down to watch together were the Christmas repeats of Morecambe and Wise. They may be forty-odd years old, but the duo’s anarchic take on vaudeville, already out of date by the 1970s, has stood the test of time and is still laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The Edited Highlights of the Doctor

One of the dramas I made a point of watching was ‘The Time of the Doctor’, Matt Smith’s last bow in the title role of Doctor Who. As regular readers of this blog will know, I’ve been a fan of the series all my life, so as we'd been told the Doctor was at the end of his life – for good, this time – in the best traditions of regeneration stories, I was looking forward to something truly apocalyptic. What we got looked like the edited highlights of an epic, series-length story with the emotive scenes again given most of the screen time (a common feature of Doctor Who’s 21st century reboot). If long-term Doctor fans out there can imagine the ten part ‘The War Games’ cut down to an hour and the Doctor’s concluding trial by the Time Lords given five minutes at the end, that was pretty much what we got in ‘The Time of the Doctor’.

Mr Smith's festive farewell. (Image: BBC)

The Doctor’s last stand over several hundred years as the guardian of Trenzalore, which concealed a crack in the universe hiding his lost planet Gallifrey, was hard to empathise with as you saw it on fast-forward. His ageing into a decrepit old man had no dramatic impact as it happened so fast and – to be blunt – Smith’s performance didn’t change once he had the make up on. Particularly annoying were the diversions of Clara (Jenna Coleman) back to her family’s Christmas dinner, which were only there to justify the story’s status as a Christmas Day special, and took the story’s emphasis away from where it should have been.

‘The Time of the Doctor’ did wrap up all the enigmatic storylines of the Smith era, but, again, there was a nagging feeling of disappointment as the various narrative threads were explained away in a few lines of dialogue that had no dramatic consequences. Couldn’t they have all led up to something truly climactic, particularly as some of the storylines had been ongoing since Smith’s first episode?

For me, the best moment was the touchingly written and performed regeneration scene. It made emotional and dramatic sense that the Doctor’s guilt over Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), the first person he met in this body, would be dispelled in his final moments by a spectral visitation from her. And the Doctor removing his signature bow tie, just before he changed, was a lovely piece of melancholy symbolism.   

The Adventures of the Indulgent Authors

I was looking forward to the return of Sherlock – like most of the nation, I suspect – but on the evidence of the two new stories screened so far, something seems to have gone awry: in short, the show is now in love with its own cult. The telling in-joke of a Sherlock fan club aside, ‘The Empty Hearse’ spent a lot of its time teasing the audience about how Sherlock Holmes survived the fall from Bart’s Hospital, and by the end you still weren’t entirely sure if you’d been given a genuine explanation. Add to that the protracted resumption of the friendship between Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson (Martin Freeman) – a lot of which was very funny, admittedly – and the actual plot of foiling a terrorist attack on London felt tacked on and insubstantial, a feeling compounded by having Sherlock simply throw the off-switch on the bomb. After the tight, immaculately plotted stories of Series Two, ‘The Empty Hearse’ came across as slack and disjointed.

Watson and Holmes are distracted from their usual
business of crime solving. (Image: BBC)

The self-indulgence continued in last Sunday’s ‘The Sign of Three’, although as a whole the story was better constructed. Most of the screen time was given over to the wedding of Watson and Mary Marston (Amanda Abbington) and the hilarity that ensued from casting Holmes as the Best Man. By my reckoning it was half an hour in before anything resembling a detective plot emerged, but the clever thing about ‘The Sign of Three’ was that, after the first story, elements that didn’t look like they were going to connect – a serial dater of lonely hearts, death threats against Watson’s old commander and the wedding itself – this time all came together satisfyingly.

Frustratingly, though, the villain had little dialogue and hardly any personality. Watching it, I got the feeling that the writers – all of whom work on Doctor Who, funnily enough – and leading men Cumberbatch and Freeman were more interested in enjoying the comedy that resulted from the wedding and stag night than developing the mystery (which is a shame, as the original Conan Doyle story is one of his best). I can understand the production team wanting to show different aspects to the characters as the series progresses, but they shouldn’t lose sight of what made Sherlock popular in the first place: stylish, original and off-beat crime thrillers. And as much as I like Cumberbatch, he came dangerously close to a camp send-up of his Holmes character in ‘The Sign of Three’. Hopefully normal service will be resumed next week.

Better call Saul

As I was underwhelmed with the festive schedules, once I was back in London I gave the box set of the first three series of Breaking Bad a go. Every so often a programme comes along that everyone I know, as well as the media, raves about, and over the last year that’s certainly been the case with this US import. Intrigued by the premise – a terminally ill chemistry teacher starts making the illegal drug crystal meth to raise funds for his family – I slid the first disc into the Fairclough Towers DVD player and curled up on the sofa.

Give or take the odd food and bathroom break and fitful sleep, I was still there three days later and had continued into Series Four. Much to my delight, Breaking Bad is one of the best drama series I’ve ever seen. It was commissioned for the AMC, the production company behind Mad Men, which gives you some idea of its quality. Although I admire the 1960s-set saga, for me Breaking Bad has the edge: it’s a parable for these hard economic times, as a dedicated family man, Walter White (the extraordinary Bryan Cranston) is driven to extreme measures out of the best of motives. One of the mesmerising things about the show is watching a decent character drawn further and further into a corrupt world, who in turn becomes more and more corrupted by it. Cranston’s performance is so subtly drawn that the change in White is fascinatingly gradual. 

Who ya gonna call? (Image: AMC)

It’s not pretentious to say that Breaking Bad bears comparison with Shakespeare or Dickens. Like the great works by these literary giants, all the characters, from Walt’s family on down, are either three dimensional or at the very least distinctive, and have an essential part to play in the narrative. Among the many stand-outs are Skylar White (Anna Gunn), a joy to watch as a witty, moral woman slowly becomes complicit in her husband's murky new world; Hank (Dean Norris), Walt’s macho brother-in-law in the Drug Enforcement Agency, who has to come to terms with both his mental insecurities and horrific shooting injuries; his trophy wife Marie (Betsy Brandt), with a weakness for shoplifting, and the quiet, mild mannered Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), the fast-food chain owning pillar of the community who’s secretly a ruthless drug baron. Arguably my favourite character is Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), the opportunistic lawyer with trashy TV adverts, gaudy dress sense and an arsenal of smart one-liners. Despite presenting an immaculate picture of someone who shouldn’t be taken at all seriously, his brash front conceals a sharp mind as he runs rings around the American judicial system. Even minor characters like the meth heads ‘Badger’ (Matt L. Jones) and ‘Skinny Pete’ (Charles Baker) are a joy to watch, comic relief in the same mould as the gravediggers who lightened Hamlet’s darkness.

Holding the whole series together is the love-hate relationship between Walt and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), a junkie drop-out White enlists to help him sell the meth. It’s fascinating watching their relationship change over the series, as the initially amoral Jesse becomes more humane just as White becomes more ruthless and manipulative.

The comparisons with Grand Tragedy and Charles D also hold in the way Breaking Bad works. Its narrative is driven by the vintage trio of power, corruption and lies, together with one’s own kin – “Family is all” a character says at one point – a common thread from Richard III to Coriolanus, from David Copperfield to Little Dorrit. You could say the same of The Sopranos but that went on far too long, while Breaking Bad runs to a finely judged five seasons, ensuring its reputation as seminal TV. Being set on the American/Mexican gives the series a distinctive, exotic tone which is never overplayed. There’s also a touch of the Coen Brothers’ idiosyncratic take on crime, evidenced in a trouser-less Walt standing in the road pointing a gun in the opening episode, via an 11 year-old assassin to the wheelchair-bound gangster Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis), who can only communicate by using a bell.

First principles

Still Open All Hours. The way forward? (Image: BBC)

After watching something as well constructed as Breaking Bad, which flows so well and is dramatic, horrific, startling and funny – sometimes all at the same time – I couldn’t help wondering why the writers of Doctor Who and Sherlock can’t be just as disciplined. With such a fascinating gallery of characters, you can easily see how the Breaking Bad writers could have given in to indulgence by doing, say, an outright comedy episode or one that fast-forwarded through the misadventures of Saul. To their credit they didn’t and the series was never allowed to become a victim of its own success or in-jokey. The other striking thing about Breaking Bad is how many long, talky scenes there are. The audience in trusted to enjoy the quality of the dialogue and the performances in a manner that’s reminiscent of old-style videotaped television, which was more like theatre than film. Remarkably, the resurrection of Open All Hours, the predictably titled Still Open All Hours, worked in exactly the same way, albeit with jokes. Apart from the promotion of Granville (David Jason) to the main role of the tight-fisted shopkeeper and the introduction of a substitute Granville, Leroy (James Baxter), the pilot shown on Boxing Day looked like it could have been made in the 1980s. As Still Open All Hours brought in an audience of ten million, there’s still clearly a liking among the British viewing public for a series with a slower pace that offers well-crafted characters driven by witty, clever and thoughtful dialogue.

Which was pretty much what Doctor Who was like in its 1960s and 1970s heyday. Writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss might argue that they need to keep things moving because of the children watching, but the Harry Potter films – a good comparison with Matt Smith’s era – don’t suffer from the Attention Deficit Disorder-editing and it’s-fantasy-so-we-can-do-what we-like-with-the-plot approach of some recent Doctor Who episodes. As for the Cult of Sherlock, it’s highly unlikely that in any other contemporary crime drama you’d have a whole episode devoted to the comedy potential of one of the main characters getting married. That sort of thing can test the audience’s patience.

Moffat and co have more than delivered the goods on Doctor Who and Sherlock in the past, so here’s hoping the recent self-indulgence and abbreviated storytelling is a blip. Doctor Who and Sherlock are still two of my favourite series, but I reckon they could learn a thing or two from Breaking Bad, the new kid on the block whose storytelling is based on the oldest, most proven traditions in literature.

“We got nowhere to go but up.”