Sweeney!

An informant turns up dead, and Jack Regan is pulled into something well above his pay grade. That's the engine of Sweeney!, the 1977 theatrical spin-off that took Thames's Flying Squad off the small screen and gave them a film of their own. An old friend asks Regan to look into the death of his girlfriend, and what starts as a favour soon stops being police work altogether.

The trouble comes at him from every direction. Regan finds himself a marked man, framed on a drunk-drive charge and suspended from the force he has given his life to. With the warrant card gone, he's left with nothing but his wits, dodging government hitmen while he tries to get at whoever is actually running the game. George Carter wants to help and mostly can't; when your best mate is also your partner and the authorities have cut you loose, there's not much he can do except watch and worry.

Ranald Graham and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, David Wickes directed, and the cast around John Thaw and Dennis Waterman is a strong one. Ian Bannen is Charles Baker, Colin Welland appears as Frank Chadwick, and there's Diane Keen as Bianca Hamilton. Joe Melia, Brian Glover, Michael Coles and Lynda Bellingham fill out the ranks, which tells you something about the depth on offer here.

What works about Sweeney! is the reversal. For ninety-odd minutes, the man whose job is applying pressure becomes the man under it. Regan without the Squad is still Regan, stubborn as ever, but the film lets you see how much of him was the badge. The villains have resources he can't match and rules they don't follow, which suits him fine, because he never played by many himself.

It's a darker, bigger canvas than the series usually allowed, and Thaw carries it easily. Suspended, hunted and furious, he's never been better value.