“It was so different”: the classic TV show Ray Winstone called ahead of its time
Television and Ray Winstone have a long and storied connection that dates back decades, and he even turned down one of the greatest shows ever made during that ongoing association.
One of the actor’s earliest credits ended up being pulled by the BBC after it had already been filmed due to its controversial subject matter, only for Winstone and Alan Parker to remake Scum as a feature, one that ultimately served as his breakthrough role.
In the mid-1980s, he played Will Scarlett in three seasons of cult favourite series Robin of Sherwood, headlined the early-1990s sitcom Get Back, and then completely stayed away from anything that wasn’t a limited or miniseries for more than two decades until he anchored diamond trading American effort Ice for two seasons alongside Donald Sutherland.
Winstone has amassed his fair share of small screen credits, but he knocked back a massive one when he decided the lure of playing Jimmy McNulty in David Simon’s The Wire wasn’t something worth relocating his young family to Baltimore for, only to sit back as a viewer and watch it go down in history as one of the best of all time.
The very first credit of his professional life came when he was cast in the pivotal role of ‘Second Youth’ in a 1976 episode of a hit British show, which began an invadvertent association that would come full circle 36 years later when he played the lead role in its feature-length adaptation.
Starring John Thaw and Dennis Waterman, The Sweeney featured the pair as Jack Regan and George Carter, a pair of grizzled detectives working for the London police’s Flying Squad. To apprehend their targets, they use methods and means that blur the lines between either side of the legal divide, thriving in the grey areas to bend the rules to their own advantage.
Procedurals with cops willing to disregard the rulebook in favour of closing a case are all the rage and have been for decades, but as one of the first, Winstone saw The Sweeney as a trailblazer that spoke to him in a way that episodic drama rarely had before.
“It was one of the most iconic shows, it was so different and so ahead of its time, really,” he told The Playlist. “It changed the face of British TV. At that time, in the ’70s, it was a breath of fresh air that came. They were good in their own way, these other shows were kind of kitchen sink dramas, and The Sweeney was real working-class stuff and blew everybody away.”
Inheriting the role of Regan from Thaw, Winstone and musician Ben Drew’s Carter unravelled a criminal conspiracy in an action thriller that was hardly reflective of how the leading man viewed its predecessor. It was a by-the-numbers action thriller that brought nothing new to the table, but at least the star was able to indulge in some wish-fulfilment by following in the footsteps of something he loved.
