User Reviews

"Nightmare" is by no means even slightly light or comedic; this is a rather gritty piece of television, as Regan and Carter track down not one but two murderous gangs of villains and/or terrorists who are stealing lorry loads of cigars which are actually lorry loads of drugs.

Will Regan's girlfriend's bad dreams come true? There are few who come out of this episode unscathed. This plot perhaps most closely constitutes the 'nightmares' of those who are meant to protect society.

This is one of the most memorable episodes from THE SWEENEY . It's perhaps not down to the writing skills of Ranald Graham . What it will be remembered for is being one of the most violent pieces of television from the 1970s . Gritty doesn't begin to describe it and when it's shown on ITV4 and other satellite stations it's heavily edited

The plot itself is hard hitting . A couple of dissidents from the provisional IRA decide to get involved in the international cocaine trade in order to buy assault rifles with laser sights . Unfortunately their plan goes astray when some local opportunist thieves decide to mug the driver lorrying the load . This leads an extremely shocking scene where one of the muggers is shot dead and his colleague who is earing a white polo top has a chunk blown out of him before the driver himself is shot dead with his own gun . The sequence itself resembles out of a Sam Peckinpah film but where as Bloody Sam brought an artistic beauty to his gore the directing here is much flatter which makes it more distressing . It's this scene that is heavily edited

The wounded villain and his surviving colleague steal the lorry and stash the contents and its their greed that causes their deaths . Crime doesn't pay and greed is not good screams the subtext as one villain bleeds to death which might not have been the case if he'd gone straight to hospital while later the two IRA men track down the survivor and execute him as he pleads for his life . The fact that he isn't killed on camera doesn't make the sequence any less chilling as he squeels for his life . . The episode ends with Regan and Carter getting in to a shoot out with the IRA men and one of their relatives who is a teenage girl . If they'd shot the teenage girl it wouldn't have made the episode any more disturbing or violent than it already was

There is nothing subtle about Graham's script but what it does very well is give the audience 50 minutes of very gritty crime drama . Perhaps too gritty to work as entertainment per se , especially in the era when it was made when murders by the IRA was a daily event in Northern Ireland while bombings in mainland Britiain were still bitter fresh memories There is a line of dialogue that sticks out in that " The IRA don't deal drugs " . How times change both in the theater of politics and television . Look up " IRA members arrested in Columbia " on goggle and see what comes up

Not a great episode. It's perhaps enlivened by some unusual dream sequences featuring then-new laser technology but these feel cheesy and dated when viewing in a modern light. The rest of the plot, about rival gangs and IRA involvement, has potential but the execution is plodding.