CAR CHASE TO THE SEVENTIES: REWATCHING THE SEVEN-UPS

It may be the best car chase of all time. The other night, when I re-watched The Seven-Ups for the first time in at least twenty years, I was struck immediately by how completely it drew me back into its place and time. Roy Scheider, dressed like a businessman, is pacing in front of the Chock Full O'Nuts lunchroom on 42^nd Street. It is New York City circa 1972, gloriously brash, cheap, dirty, dynamic, and exciting all at once. By the time Scheider and his team (called Seven-Ups because the crimes they investigate carry sentences of seven years or more) bust some counterfeiters in a jewellery store, it was like I was 21 again, and I was THERE!

The Seven Ups was produced and directed by Philip D'Antoni, who had produced The French Connection, and it exists basically to reproduce the thrills of that film, namely dirty New York, grimy cops, and a car chase. Scheider plays a character named Buddy, just as he did in The French Connection. He's obsessed, and the car chase, which we'll get to in a moment, reflects his obsession.

The other things I remembered were a brilliant little scene from Joe Spinell, when the Seven Ups are about to pound a confession out of him, and he shows them his mis-shaped fingers and tells them to go ahead an hurt him, he won't talk. Spinell plays a guy helping the movie's pair of villains; I recalled how perfectly matched Bill Hickman and Richard Lynch were, playing Moon and Bo. Lynch is the guy who burned himself while tripping on LSD, turning him from handsome leading man wannabee to bizarre villain. Hickman, who also was the stunt driver for this film, and The French Connection, and Bullit, simply looks more like a hard-boiled thug than anyone I can think of; how he never got cast in a Parker movie, or as Parker, is beyond me.

Hickman not only choreographed the Seven-Ups chase scene, but drove the lead car. It was filmed on the Taconic Parkway, and the ending, with the auto-decapitation, does indeed deliver the payoff D'Antoni wanted. But underneath the action, the movie is really about betrayal. The story comes from Sonny Grosso, who was the real cop Scheider played in The French Connection (and that's Grosso with the beard delivering the funny money in the first scene). Grosso, who went on to become a producer (of Pee Wee's Playhouse, among other things), was himself targeted in police corruption investigations—they were the subject of a book he co-wrote, Point Blank (not the Richard Stark one!) and a film which he co-produced, A Question Of Honor, based on that book, with its screenplay written by Budd Schulberg. Given that subtext, it's no surprise that, along with obsession, loyalty and betrayal should be at its core.

As in The French Connection, Tony LoBianco plays the neighbourhood guy with big ideas, but this time he and Scheider are childhood friends, and he thinks Lo Bianco is his stoolie. Their final scene, when the extent of betrayal is confronted, was one I remembered vividly as soon as I saw it again, and still is powerful. Urs Furrer's photography is the epitome of dirty seventies urban, and the film also boasts an outstanding score by the jazz trumpeter Don Ellis—fast-paced, punchy, discordant, sharp-edged: it helps drive the film with the same manic energy as Scheider and the cars.

His Seven-Ups are well cast too: Jerry Leon as Mingo in particular, whose characterisation seemed to have homage paid to it by Paul Butler in the TV series Crime Story. There's also a pre-Dallas Ken Kercheval as Ansel, one of those characters whose fate you can predict as soon as he walks into a scene. 

I mentioned Crime Story, and it would not surprise me at all to learn Michael Mann admired this film, and that it didn't, in some ways, make its way into a number of his own movies. I was pleased The Seven-Ups held up so well, and amazed at how fully it drew me back into its world.

THE GUARDIAN'S TOP 50 TV DRAMAS

The Guardian's great and good critics selected their 'greatest 50 TV dramas of all time' (you can hit the link here); all-time in this case meaning all-time within the UK, which is reasonable enough since you couldn't really expect them to judge shows their audience has never seen. As usual, such lists are very heavily weighted toward the present; since the TV critic slot is one traditionally given to the editor's roommate at Oxford, next-door neighbour in Islington or the Cotswolds or someone who had actually seen a programme on the wireless, that's to be expected. But the list did throw up some surprises. The biggest one was that an American series, The Sopranos, was judged the greatest of all time (when many would argue it isn't even the greatest imported from HBO). The rest of the top ten (apart from number 4, Mad Men, also from HBO, also tremendous, and current) was filled by British shows, which pointed out another difference: they were primarily in the mini-series format: self-contained movies cut into a limited number of episodes, while the Americans tend to work on the continuing series, which changes the dramatic focus, and almost demands ensemble casts and soap-operay story-lines. Indeed, continuing mini-series, like Prime Suspect (somewhat undervalued at 19) have a distinct advantage over a series like, say Hill St Blues (hugely influential, at number 37--NYPD Blue, its direct descendant, didn't make the cut).

Even in British terms: the only crime series included are Cracker (23), Morse (30) and The Sweeney (47). No Between The Lines? Resnick?, Minder? The Vice? Ghost Squad? And choosing four straight-forward soaps like Coronation Street (26) East Enders (28) Brookside (38) and the best of the lot, Grange Hill (50), is a joke, a pandering to an audience the Guardian doesn't have. All four, but no Dallas?

Obviously, I can only comment about British shows of my youth that made it to America, but though The Prisoner, daring even now and off the charts back then, gets in at 34, there is no place for The Avengers which surely is a landmark whichever side of the ocean you were on. I'd like to see The Saint and Danger Man included too. I have no idea about which shows from 1950s or 1960s America made it over here, though the Twilight Zone does sneak into the chart at 40. I'm pretty sure The Untouchables made it over on ITV and I wonder if The Defenders did. I'm a little surprised American mini-series don't get a look, apart from Band Of Brothers (again, HBO, and with a British lead), but Lonesome Dove seems quality in retrospect; Roots does look a bit too worthy now, but no one appreciated Robert Mitchum's spot-on performance in War & Remembrance.

Nice to see St Elsewhere recognised as the best doctor ensemble show, but perplexing to see 24 (although its format was innovative) and The Shield both in, and no place for Crime Story, Michael Mann's exceptional early 60s show or Homicide, the precursor to the Wire, and very good indeed. Odd to see This Life ('it's not a British Friends', writer Amy Perkins protested over and over again, before anyone had said it was, desperately prompting Brit critics to say how much better than Friends it was. They obliged, and no one noticed it was more a kitchen-sink less glossy 30 Something). Odd to see Buffy at 22 and Battleship Galactica at 25 and not a single western. Nor the newspaper show Lou Grant, a spinoff from Mary Tyler Moore intended as a TV version of All The Presidents Men but closer to The Defenders.

That The Wire comes in at 14, behind Twin Peaks even, seems bizarre. That Six Feet Under is right behind it at 15 seems even more so. Six Feet Under but no Law & Order, which has run over here for years and spawned a British remake that simply copies the original scripts and makes them boring? Where was Edge Of Darkness, maybe the best mini-series of them all? I Claudius? John Adams? LA Law? HBO's Oz got in, which was interesting, but how about Wise Guy, which lasted about as long? Even the first couple of series of Spooks were worth more than Coronation Street. And I saw Guardian readers asking about the German Heimat, but what about those two recent imports to BBC Four, Spiral (France) and Wallander (Sweden), the first exceptional in the mini-series format and the second a tremendous series.

The Six Most Egregious Omissions: The Avengers, Law & Order, Homicide, Edge Of Darkness, Crime Story, Between The Lines