The writer Ian Kennedy Martin, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 90, created one of British television’s most realistic, groundbreaking television police dramas. With action shot on the streets of London, the 1970s series The Sweeney featured screeching tyres, punch-ups, officers who could be as violent as the criminals, and lines such as: “Get yer trousers on – you’re nicked!”
It began as Regan, a 1974 story in the ITV Armchair Cinema series, starring John Thaw as Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as Detective Sergeant George Carter, members of the Flying Squad (known in cockney rhyming slang as Sweeney Todd), a Metropolitan police section tackling armed robbers.
