The Sweeney screeching back onto screens

Forget those Miami Vice muppets. Compared to the lads of The Sweeney, Crockett and Tubbs are about as useful as Royston Vasey’s Edward and Tubbs.

Jack Regan (John Thaw) and George Carter (Dennis Waterman) shattered police genre conventions when they first put the boot in back in 1975. Hard drinking, hard living and tough on the crims, the Sweeney were a new breed of copper.

They’ve been on the big screen before, in two spin-off films. But with a whole new audience to gouge money from, the remake beast has spotted the potential, and Regan and Carter will return to show all the alleged current tough cops how to do it.

The show ran from 1975 until 1979, and followed the jobs of Thaw and Waterman’s characters, which were part of the Sweeney Todd – rhyming slang for the police’s Flying Squad unit, which tackles violent crime. And now DNA Films, Fox Searchlight and the series’ original creator Ian Kennedy Martin, are teaming up with writer-director Nick Love (The Football Factory) for a 21st Century outing.

"We want to make it as a contemporary police story, not a period piece, but just as violent and sweary as the original," DNA chief Andrew Macdonald told Variety. "It's about an older cop who's in the second half of a career that he has spent in relentless pursuit of the job, grappling with how the world has changed."

The movie aims to crank cameras next May, and the hunt is now on for modern-day Regan and Carter equivalents. And if you’re too young to remember ‘em? Take a look at time-switch drama Life On Mars. Get your trousers on - you're nicked!