The Cool Of ‘The Sweeney’.
Anyone who grew up in the 1970s will remember just how many brilliant shows were on television. There may only have been three channels to choose from, but the programmes were far superior. Today, we have literally hundreds of different TV stations and many of them are padded-out with all manner of rubbish merely to make up their twenty-four hour schedules. As paradoxical as it may sound, less channels meant more good programmes.
One of the most popular shows on television back in the seventies was, ‘The Sweeney’. It was by no means the first police drama to come along, but it was certainly the most accurate one to date. Before this, the police had always been portrayed as being ‘squeaky clean’, however ‘The Sweeney’ was to change all that. Corruption and bent coppers were a popular subject in the show and this gave the whole thing a gritty and realistic feel. It also added a little bit of glamor to the classic bobby job, a lot like the medical dramas of today have suddenly made locum jobs for doctors a little bit more appealing.
Note: - I would just like to make something clear. I am not saying that all policemen/policewomen are corrupt! But I am not naive enough to think they are all as pure as the driven snow. Cops are just human beings like the rest of us; there are good ones and bad ones.
John Thaw was brilliant as Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman changed police dramas forever by constantly calling him, ‘Guv’. Have you ever noticed how everyone calls their boss ‘Guv’ in police shows now? The other thing that made ‘The Sweeney’ so great was the style. The characters wore some really cool suits and the cars in the show were just great; who can dislike the old Capri’s or Mk I Cortina’s of the 1970s???
Of course, the icing on the cake was the belting intro tune. It has to be one of the greatest police show themes ever!