70s TV series the Flying Squad thought was too realistic

Few TV characters have had a more arresting introduction than DI Jack Regan, John Thaw's no-nonsense copper from The Sweeney. Storming into the flat of a villain in the pilot episode, Regan finds his suspect in bed with a strumpet and utters the immortal line, "Get your trousers on, you're nicked."

That's The Sweeney in a rough-and-ready nutshell: coarse, streetwise, funny, straight to the point, and unapologetically aggressive. With that line, DI Jack Regan booted down the doors of TV history.

The Sweeney, which ran for four series between 1975 to 1978, followed Regan and his partner DS George Carter, played by Dennis Waterman, of the Flying Squad (the "Sweeney" in cockney rhyming slang - "Flying Squad, Sweeney Todd"). The first series is now available on remastered Blu-ray to mark its 50th anniversary, with the second series set to follow in September.

Racing around London in their Ford Consul, Regan and Carter were hard in every way: hard-hitting, hard-edged, hard-talking, and hard-drinking. Watched 50 years on, it's still infectiously macho stuff. Just the theme tune alone conjures up images of Regan and Carter roughing up a rascal.

On-screen they bent the rules to get a collar. Putting the boot into a suspect to get a confession followed by a heavy session at the boozer was all in a day's work for the Sweeney lads. But off-screen they rewrote the rulebook entirely.

It was the first drama series shot entirely on film - it was shot on 16mm around various West London locations - and the first series to show police as fallible tough nuts. Regan and Carter's methods blur the lines between hero and villain, using their own liberal interpretation of the law.

As The Sweeney's creator Ian Kennedy Martin says, TV police officers until that point were "all good and honest coppers". But, adds Kennedy Martin, "all coppers weren't good and honest."

TV's premier law enforcer had been the granddad-like Dixon of Dock Green (Jack Warner), who was already 60 when the series began in 1955, and continued catching toerags and lecturing viewers on the perils of crime until he was 80.

"That was what you were served up with," says Kennedy Martin about the cosy coppering of Dixon of Dock Green. "Police propaganda."

Kennedy Martin, now 89, had a friend in the Flying Squad - at a time when change was being forced upon the Met. In 1972, Robert Mark was made police commissioner. He targeted corruption and dragged the Met kicking and screaming into the modern age.

Kennedy Martin drank with real Flying Squad officers - some of whom were indistinguishable from the villains who drank in the same pubs.

"There were some very, very tough guys in the Sweeney," says Kennedy Martin. "I met a lot of police and realised there was a real story to tell about these people."

The pilot, Regan, was part of ITV's Armchair Cinema anthology, but was always intended to transition into a full series. In Kennedy Martin's story, a criminal gang throws an undercover officer out of a building, so Regan enlists Carter - a street-savvy South Londoner who knows all the faces and villains - to catch them.

Kennedy Martin wrote the Regan character specifically for Thaw. They were close friends, having worked together on the military police series Redcap (1964-66). He also knew Dennis Waterman from previous work and bumped into Waterman in a cinema queue to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (another iconic duo), where Kennedy Martin suggested that Waterman join his new crime drama.

The pilot and subsequent series was produced by Ted Childs for Euston Films, an arm of Thames Television. Childs had worked on the epic WWII documentary series The World at War and the crime series Special Branch. But after seeing The French Connection at the cinema, Childs was inspired to make something with more grit and action. Seeing Kennedy Martin's script, Childs jumped at the chance to produce it.

"You got a sniff early on that people were already getting excited about this project," recalls Kennedy Martin about the buzz for Regan and Carter. But there was a creative clash between the writer and producer - what Kennedy Martin now calls "a colossal row" over changes to his script. Kennedy Martin walked off.

The Regan pilot aired in June 1974 and The Sweeney debuted in January 1975. Among the first series' best episodes is Jackpot, in which Regan and Carter hunt down a missing £35,000 from a security van "blag" - only to find that a robber intends to use it to pay for his daughter's life saving operation - and The Placer, which sees Regan go undercover as a moustachioed lorry driver to nab a gang of hijackers.

Regan's the kind of cop who acts purely on gut instinct - not afraid to barge into a suspect's digs without a warrant or even fit someone up if needs be. But he also senses when they've got the wrong man and ensures that justice is done properly.

The imitable lines, slang, and bolshy banter are all part of the show's macho pleasure - lines such as, "We're the Sweeney, son, and we haven't had any dinner," or the more direct, "Shut it!" Not to mention whiplash-inducing car chases ("Who taught you to drive, Evel Knievel?") and the customary punch-ups.

The action - which feels as real as the streets it's filmed on - was put together by stunt arranger Peter Brayham, who knew real underworld figures and saw his share of action.

There is more to The Sweeney than fighting and rough language, however. Part of the series' brilliance is showing the impact of policing on the coppers and their wives. In the first series' finale, Abduction, Regan's daughter is kidnapped, which leads his ex-wife to break down and reveal how Regan's job effectively ended their marriage.

Over four series, The Sweeney brought in a parade of guest stars that included Brian Blessed, Warren Clarke, Billy Murray, Lynda Bellingham and Richard Wilson, playing various blaggers, kidnappers, ex-cons, snouts, witnesses, and bad eggs. Producer Ted Childs used a roster of top writers too, including Kennedy Martin's brother, Troy, who created Z Cars (1962-78) and wrote The Italian Job.

Z Cars predated The Sweeney and is also credited for adding some grit and social realism to the crime genre.

The Sweeney channelled real-life controversies. As part of the clean-up of the Met, Flying Squad commander Ken Drury was outed for corruption and later jailed.

The changes forced upon the Met by Robert Mark were represented in The Sweeney by DCI Frank Haskins (Garfield Morgan), who wants things done by the book and - at first, at least - has a prickly relationship with Regan over his rogue tactics. Both Haskins and Regan would be investigated for corruption across The Sweeney's 54 episodes.

Watched now, Regan and Carter may seem like clichéd hardened coppers because they created the mould. But, as Kennedy Martin explains, the real Sweeney were actually like that.

During his research days - which involved a lot of boozing with police - there was an officer who came to the pub and explained he had a stakeout to attend later that day,

"We gave him a few drinks and a few more drinks," recalls Kennedy Martin. "I said, 'Out of interest, where are you going?' He said, 'There's going to be a bank robbery in Berkeley Square.' After quite a few drinks he set off slightly wobbly to go to this bank robbery in Berkeley Square."

The cast and crew of the TV version followed suit, with lots of partying and drinking and camaraderie behind the scenes. In a 2012 documentary, Waterman admitted that the first day of filming involved a lot of waiting around in a pub and by the time he had to do some acting he was sloshed and kept blowing his lines.

Members of the real Flying Squad credited the show for its realistic depiction. "It totally captured the feeling of the Flying Squad at that time," said a former Sweeney detective constable, Harry Forbes. "We fondly called it on occasion 'our instruction class.'"

The regional version of Flying Squad would invite the actors to functions. As Waterman explained, "They'd often drive us there with the lights blazing and sirens going, just to show us how fast they could drive - which was kind of nerve wracking."

There was one aspect of the series that real Sweeney officers didn't like, however. "The real police always said, 'The problem with The Sweeney is that it's too accurate. My wife keeps asking where I am,'" recalled Waterman.

The Sweeney attracted a peak audience of 19 million viewers and produced two solid spinoff films. But John Thaw decided to throw in the badge while they were still on top. Waterman agreed - it was best to leave before The Sweeney ran out of ideas.

John Thaw went on to play Inspector Morse and Dennis Waterman had a second hit show with Minder. Kennedy Martin, meanwhile, created Juliet Bravo and The Chinese Detective.

Fifty years on, not every aspect of The Sweeney stands up to interrogation - Regan and Carter would have the book thrown at them for sexism - but context is crucial. The Sweeney isn't just a belting cop show, but a very real slice of Seventies Britain.

While many TV coppers followed The Sweeney - most notably the gang from time travel crime series Life on Mars - no one kicked the door in and said, "You're nicked" quite like Regan and Carter.

The Sweeney Series 1 is available on Blu-ray now. Series 1 is available from September 1