‘Get your trousers on, you’re nicked!’

John Thaw’s hard-drinking, rule-bending detective Jack Regan was a 70s TV icon - and amazingly, he was inspired by a real policeman. Acclaimed scriptwriter Ian Kennedy Martin gives Stephen Wright the inside story on The Sweeney, the legendary ITV series he created. The cop show pioneer also tells all about his other hits including Juliet Bravo, why filming car chases was easier in the 70s (the cars were all dirt cheap) - and how he had the original idea for iconic Michael Caine crime caper The Italian Job (but sold it to his script-writing brother Troy Kennedy Martin, who wrote the BBC’s long-running Z-Cars). Strap in for half an hour of TV crime drama nostalgia.

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