John Thaw (Regan) and Dennis Waterman (Carter) are my favorite plain-clothes heavy-handed police procedural guys, dressed in big ties, mismatched shirts, wide bell bottoms, well suited (pun intended) to driving heaped up muscle cars around the grittier streets of 1970s London, chasing bad guys galore and smashing white-collar thugs against their dusty umarked vans and chain-link fences surrounding derelict high-rise factories littered with broken glass. I bought the entire DVD set after I viewed all of serene, academic-minded "Morse" about 10 times. In some ways, I've enoyed "The Sweeney" as much or more as it reminds me of Darren McGavin in Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer - rough and tumble, unexpected British humor spoken in low, quick pulses, with complex plots that spin round till they suddenly smack you in the head with explosive force. Love the Sweeney theme too, brassy big band throbbing sound that matches the mayhem. One of my favorite episodes among many involves a latin lady, a gynocologist and a missing traffic light.
Review of The Sweeney
