The Sweeney: Bank Jobs on DVD

• Cert:
• Cat.no: PTDVD 8052
• Running time: 98 minutes
• Year: 1981
• Pressing: 2000
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 14
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Mono)
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: None
• Widescreen: 1.78:1 (16:9)
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 5
• Price: £19.99
• Extras : Scene index, Picture Gallery, Car Trivia, Biographies, History

Directors:

Bill Brayne

(Contact Breaker)
David Wickes (Night Out)

Producer:

Screenwriters:

(Contact Breaker)
Troy Kennedy Martin (Night Out)

Music:

Cast:

DI Jack Regan: John Thaw
DS George Carter: Dennis Waterman
DCI Haskins: Garfield Morgan

The Sweeney: Bank Jobsis one of two DVDs released featuring the crime-fighting antics of Flying Squad’s Detective InspectorJack Regan (John Thaw) and Detective Sargeant George Carter (Dennis Waterman),released on the digital format for the first time ever and looking rather different thanyou’d expect.

There are two episodes on this disc, the first being Contact Breaker, in whichfour men pull off a bank job (now, there’s a surprise given the title of the DVD). Onelets slip the name of a colleague and when the beat-up witness is interviewedby Regan and Carter in hospital, he remembers the spoken name, Danny (Warren Clarke).Trouble is, Danny’s been in the nick doing bird, etc., but is out on home leave for theweekend and to complicate matters worse, he spent the night of the robbery at the nearbystock-car race track on his own and reckons it’s a fit up, guv.

Has he been framed, or is he telling porkies? And with the gruesome twosome trying to puthim in the cage for a lot longer, how the hell will he prove his innocence?

In Night Out, another bank job is taking place, but the operation looks toowell-organised for the modicum of money stashed inside, so the cops deduce they’reafter the safety deposite boxes too. Regan is placed on the job immediately, while waitingin the pub next door for the afternoon (what a chore!) is Carter, listening out for thecall to ‘go go go’.

Regan’s boss doesn’t want to wade in feet first to nick the bad guys as their Mr Bighas gone AWOL. Regan also needs to find out where old flame Iris Long (Mitzi Rogers)fits into the picture.

Forever shown on TV in the standard 4:3 fullscreen format, this DVD along with another,Car Chases, has been digitally re-mastered from the original 16mm film negativeand is presented in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen. I was wondering how it would fare in thetransition and ratio-wise it looks like the 4:3 version zoomed in to fill the entirewidescreen TV area, but of course with the benefit of 33% increased resolution that ananamorphic image brings. For the most part, it suits the 16:9 ratio fine, but there arethe odd occasions when obvious things are cropped top and bottom and this will lookstrange on a standard TV.

For a 26-year-old TV show though, you can guess that the print still isn’t perfect. In factthere’s plenty of print flecks and scratches and an underlying level of grain throughout,but it’s no worse than you’d normally expect if you were watching it on TV. The averagebitrate is a steady 4.64Mb/s per episode.

The sound is in bog-standard mono, as originally recorded. The dialogue is fine most ofthe time, but nothing else really leaps out at you.

Car Trivia mentions Regan’s Ford Granada and a blue Ford Cortina while the villainsalways drove a Jaguar, the Biographies briefly cover Thaw and Waterman and Historytells you how the shooting schedule worked for this 4-series, 53-episode (and two TV movies)programme.

I’d like to have found out how and why the decision was made to release them in widescreenand the processed involved though.

Menu :Animated, with clips from the programmes, but silent. The theme tune would have been anice addition here.

Overall, when it came to Euston Films product, I was more familiar with Minderthan The Sweeney, but as cop dramas go they’ve mostly become too stale thesedays and we need some more of this maverick behaviour back on mainstream TV and nothogging the schedules of Granada Plus.

While it’s a good thing to have this on DVD, how come there’s only two episodes here?At eight quid per shout I can’t see too many takers, but a DVD box-set of an entireseries would be a must-have.

One final note, I’m not sure which night of the week this used to be shown on, butit must have been a Sunday. The closing music is so depressing, it’s enough to makeyou think at the time, “Oh fuck, another week of school starts tomorrow!”

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL