Villains cross the street or swing a pick-axe handle when they run into Regan and Carter of The Sweeney, which returns for a new series this week. But off-screen, John Thaw and Dennis Waterman, who play the tough Flying Squad colleagues, are greeted by their fans like old friends

THE BACK STREETS of Baron’s Court in London could hardly be described as a tourist attraction. Even on a sullen Monday morn- ing, you’d have to be charitable to pick out the area’s redeeming features. Milk bottles line the steps of faded terraces, and “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” is daubed aggressively on a peeling front door. The streets around here wake up slowly and painfully. Only the activity outside number 11 has brought a dishevelled couple to an upstairs window to see what’s going on.

A large television company truck squats in the street, and several early- morning strollers are dragging dogs slowly past the house.

“What you doin’, mate?” one of them asks a cameraman.

“Rentokil,” he says, straightfaced. “We’re doing a film on urban wildlife.”

But it’s more likely to be a villain who crawls out of the woodwork once the cameras start to roll – the villain The Sweeney are here to put the finger on. They’re back for a new series.

The house is just one of the locations in “alternative” London which gives the series an air of seedy authenticity.

On the doorstep, the ritual lighting of cigarettes precedes a brief discussion on the next shot between the director, John Thaw, and Dennis Waterman. Lights flood the inside of the house; people, sound-equipment and a haze of cigarette smoke fill the narrow hall. And Regan and Carter proceed to feel the collar of another “blagger.”

Waterman and Thaw finally finish the scene and emerge into the street. It’s now past opening time. “There must be a pub round here somewhere,” insists Waterman. So they set off to “suss out” the area.

“When we walk in,” says Waterman, “someone will say, ‘Ello, The Sweeney’s in’.”

“Ello,” says a boiler-suited Guinness drinker as they walk into the pub, “backs to the wall, lads, it’s The Sweeney.”

Waterman grins. “We never have any trouble in pubs. Perhaps it’s because neither of us is a muscle man – they know they won’t get much pleasure out of hitting us. What I like is that we’re always called John and Dennis, never Regan and Carter.”

Thaw has barely got his vodka to his lips when a character unhooks himself from a bar-stool and approaches. Is he a “snout”?

“I just wanted to meet you, John,” he says, “and to say I think the show’s great.”

Thaw shakes his hand. “It’s nice of you to come over, mate. Thank you. Like a drink?” Regan would probably have pinned him up against the wall.

We discuss the heavy schedule they keep – Dennis Waterman talks about his dual career as singer and actor, and John Thaw explains the difficulties of being married to a successful actress. His wife, Sheila Hancock, is starring in the musical Annie, and he is feeling tired after a night out celebrating yet another acting award. “When Sheila’s working in the evening, and I’m filming all day, we don’t see much of each other,” he says, “and that can’t be good. I couldn’t play the chauvinist and insist she stay at home. Regan might try it, but if I was like him, I wouldn’t be married to Sheila; she wouldn’t have had me.”

Waterman makes derogatory comments about Thaw’s desirability as a husband, and one-line jokes whizz back and forth.

Waterman signs autographs on the way to the bar. “He’s just learned to do joined-up writing,” says Thaw. “Dennis and I get on very well and I think that comes across. You can’t define it. You just know Regan and Carter are mates.”

They see themselves as “part of a matey team, where everybody works for everybody else”, and believe that is a major factor in the series’ success. They actually enjoy getting up at dawn to go to work. “That has to be the clincher,” says Thaw.

We leave the pub and on the way back to the scene of the fictional crime, Waterman shadow-boxes a lamp-post and explains why The Sweeney fights can look heavy.

“The fights can be dangerous if the other guy doesn’t know the routine. I can move a bit because I’ve done some boxing.” (His brother, Peter, is a former British and European professional champion). “But the good fights are usually with minor villains, played by stunt-men who know exactly what they’re doing.”

Later in the week, the unit will be filming a car chase.

“People think the car chases are speeded up,” says Waterman, “but nothing is. In four years, there have been only two occasions when the driver has said, ‘I don’t trust this, I don’t want to do this with John and Dennis in the car’.”

Their driver, Frank Henson, a man who has been known to catapult a car through a plate-glass window, park it neatly and then stroll back to demand “a fry-up with all the works”, was at the wheel during a car stunt they filmed in Wandsworth one Sunday morning.

By the time the director was ready for action, an audience had gathered. “Listen,” an assistant shouted through a megaphone, “we’ve only got one take. I don’t want a load of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and definitely no applause!”

You could never accuse The Sweeney of playing to the crowd.

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Thames Television is London’s major ITV station, with headquarters and studios in the heart of the city on the Euston Road, with the main multi-studio complex sited fifteen miles away, on a bend of the river Thames at Teddington.

Our programmes cover the whole range of modern television, from Botanic Man to Edward and Mrs Simpson, Hazell and the Kenny Everett Video Show.

Our success as a medium for advertising is directly linked to the quality of our programmes. Thames’ plans for the future include a four-part film series of Quatermass, starring Sir John Mills as the famous professor; Love in a Cold Climate, a dramatisation of Nancy Mitford’s best-selling novel; Hollywood our celebration of the silent film; and new programmes from top-class entertainers like Max Bygraves and Morecambe and Wise.

Filming entirely on location, our subsidiary Euston Films produces taut drama series like The Sweeney and the six-part serial Out, starring Tom Bell.

Thames has an unrivalled reputation for documentary films like Palestine, our three-part history of the birth of Israel, while each week TV Eye brings back film of a major news story from all over the world. We’re proud to say that our programmes equal the best in the world, having won all the major international prizes, including America’s coveted Emmy award. Thames is the only company to have won the Prix Italia four times, including victories in all three categories.

As London’s weekday station, Thames has a special responsibility to viewers in the London area. Since September 1978 we have seen the establishment of a comprehensive local news service for London. Andrew Gardner, Rita Carter and Robert Southgate introduce the main daily local news programme at six o’clock, which is supported by bulletins at lunch-time and late in the evening. In addition, the weekly half-hour Thames Report, looks in depth at the most important story of the week in London. A considerable investment in personnel and equipment has made it possible to cover stories as they happen, right up until transmission – if necessary, through a live outside broadcast.

Sports coverage is also expanding with Thames Sport Roger Allison’s Friday round-up. And we’ll be providing exclusive coverage of major events in international gymnastics, while Thames will be powerfully represented in the hundred-strong ITV team for the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

As well as being shown across the country through the ITV network, Thames programmes made for the London viewer have conquered the world.

Thames is the largest exporter of programmes to Australia, where Benny Hill, The World at War and George and Mildred have topped the ratings. In the USA, Three’s Company, which was derived from Thames’ Man about the House, was the most successful new programme in 1977/78. In Europe The Naked Civil Servant has been shown in sixteen countries and Father, Dear Father topped the ratings in Italy. Thames is making an impact with quality programmes, in more than a hundred countries all over the world.

Our chief source of revenue is the screen-time we sell to advertisers. We take no cash from the government television licence fee. Instead we provide the most influential platform for advertising in the London area.

The Thames area covers London and most of South East England, stretching from Brighton to Buckingham and Braintree, from Thanet to Oxfordshire. That area contains more than a quarter of the British people in eleven counties around London.

Thames Television Limited
306 Euston Road – London – NW1 3BB – 01-387 9494

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But it is very difficult to talk about Thames without thinking about the great programmes they produced, and almost impossible to think of Thames without thinking of “Death On The Rock”. That documentary, produced by the “This Week” team, was about a suspected shoot to kill policy against IRA suspects, focusing on a killing of 3 IRA suspects on Gibraltar.

The documentary infuriated the government of the time; an inquiry resulted, which found in the programme’s favour.

Conspiracy theories still exist about how the government manipulated the regulator into denying Thames licences to broadcast twice in 1991. Firstly, they lost their Channel 3 licence to Carlton Communications. Secondly, they were denied the Channel 5 licence despite there being no other bidders.

However, there is no proof that “Death On The Rock” was in any way responsible for either situation.

Thames were great documentary producers, but they did far more. “In Loving Memory”, the 1969 play that was later developed into a period sitcom by YTV starring Thora Hird and set in an undertakers, is forever in my childhood memories as a classic Thames comedy.

It was just one in a long stream of successful comedies from Thames. The Carry On team produced a ton of specials at Teddington; then there was “Father, Dear Father”, “The Benny Hill Show”, “Bless This House”, “Man About The House” and its two spin- offs, “George and Mildred” and “Robin’s Nest”, “Never The Twain”, “Fresh Fields” and many more.

They had a ton of great comedies and great comedy talents too, such as Mike and Bernie Winters, Leslie Crowther, Benny Hill, Tommy Cooper, Kenny Everett, and of course, as the ident into their programme went, “Here they are now, Morecambe and Wise.”

Thames Television, and their subsidiary company Euston Films, produced a ton of dramas that were and indeed still are among ITV’s best ever drama productions.

“Van Der Valk”, “The Sweeney”, “Minder”, “Widows”, “Quatermass”, “Reilly: Ace Of Spies”, “Jack The Ripper”, “Hannay”, “Rumpole Of The Bailey”, and many others were amongst the staple diet of ITV prime time for over 20 years.

Thames still has a prime time drama on ITV today, despite not having an ITV franchise. “The Bill” began in 1984, and 21 years on, the programme continues to garner good ratings in an even more competitive market than the one it was born into.

Thames also produced an incredible amount of children’s programming, both itself and through animation studio Cosgrove Hall. “Jamie and The Magic Torch”, “Chorlton and the Wheelies”, “Danger Mouse”, “Cockleshell Bay”, “Count Duckula”, “The Wind In The Willows”, “The Tomorrow People”, “Button Moon” and many more were all part of growing up for kids in the 70s and 80s, but none more so than “Rainbow”.

For over 20 years, Geoffrey, Bungle, Zippy and George played with and entertained the nation’s kids. Few programmes of any kind from any broadcaster can match that kind of longevity, and even fewer kids programmes can even come close.

Thames Television were not specialists, they could produce almost anything, and generally make a success out if it.

Sure they had their failures, just like anybody else. Everybody who loves The Goon Show will say that the TV version, “The Telegoons”, was not a patch on the radio shows, but how many people remember the other TV version, produced by Thames in 1968, called, “The Goon Show”? And who can forget the flop that was “Capital City”, about an investment bank. The show generated much controversy when one of the female characters kissed another woman on screen, then promptly disappeared.

But for every Capital City, there was a ton of successes, such as “The Bill”, “Give Us A Clue”, “Whose Baby?” and many more, across all genres.

Thames used to say that they had “A Talent For Television”. Given the fact that 13 years after losing the Channel 3 London franchise, they are still producing successful shows for ITV1, Channel 5 and anybody else who wants them to, I think we can truly agree with that statement.

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