The Sweeney:
Bank Jobs

Distributed by PT Video

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:

Ted Childs

Screenwriters:

Robert Banks-Stewart (Contact Breaker)
Troy Kennedy Martin (Night Out)

Music:

Harry South

Cast:

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

---

There are two episodes on this disc, the first being Contact Breaker, in which four men pull off a bank job (now, there's a surprise given the title of the DVD). One lets slip the name of a colleague and when the beat-up witness is interviewed by 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 the weekend and to complicate matters worse, he spent the night of the robbery at the nearby stock-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 put him 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 too well-organised for the modicum of money stashed inside, so the cops deduce they're after the safety deposite boxes too. Regan is placed on the job immediately, while waiting in the pub next door for the afternoon (what a chore!) is Carter, listening out for the call to 'go go go'.

Regan's boss doesn't want to wade in feet first to nick the bad guys as their Mr Big has 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 negative and is presented in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen. I was wondering how it would fare in the transition and ratio-wise it looks like the 4:3 version zoomed in to fill the entire widescreen TV area, but of course with the benefit of 33% increased resolution that an anamorphic image brings. For the most part, it suits the 16:9 ratio fine, but there are the odd occasions when obvious things are cropped top and bottom and this will look strange on a standard TV.

For a 26-year-old TV show though, you can guess that the print still isn't perfect. In fact there'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 average bitrate is a steady 4.64Mb/s per episode.

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

Extras :

Chapters :

Languages and Subtitles :

And there's more... :

Car Trivia mentions Regan's Ford Granada and a blue Ford Cortina while the villains always drove a Jaguar, the Biographies briefly cover Thaw and Waterman and History tells 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 widescreen and the processed involved though.

Menu :

Overall, when it came to Euston Films product, I was more familiar with Minder than The Sweeney, but as cop dramas go they've mostly become too stale these days and we need some more of this maverick behaviour back on mainstream TV and not hogging 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 entire series would be a must-have.

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

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2000.