cult film freak: JAMES BOOTH AND HELEN GILL FROM 'THE SWEENEY: POPPY'

Helen Gill in Poppy Year: 1975 Rating: ****1/2

Britain's THE SWEENEY is both a regular cop series and a revolving villain anthology wherein Scotland Yard's Flying Squad can sometimes merely provide peripheral exposition...

Like in the stellar, and very fan-favorite episode POPPY, centered on classy bad guys sparked by a local London bank robber returned from Paris to bring the money back...

James Booth in The Sweeney: Poppy

And James Booth, who ironically played a Flying Squad captain in Peter Yates's ROBBERY, makes POPPY (slang for money) a smooth handling of snappy dialogue involving where Booth's Vic Labbett is hiding-out, hiding the money and exactly when he plans on splitting...

With former partner John Rhys-Davies, whose future RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK booming voice is complimented by Booth, they make a great pair in the relatively few scenes shared. Instead each has a dame on their hands...

James Booth in The Sweeney: Poppy with Helen Gill

Rhys-Davies with Booth's spurned ex-wife and scene-stealer Helen Gill, a patient other-woman for our resilient blagger, who, later involved in a terrific empty airfield car chase, is both deadly-violent and dryly-humorous: ending on a note that could have (totally suspending disbelief) ignited a con-conning-con series all its own...

Perhaps, like throughout this episode, the crooked duo would team against genuine crooks in shifty middlemen bankers... Herein providing twits and turns for SWEENEY cops John Thaw and Dennis Waterman, who seem like special guests on their own series, and, because of who's driving, don't seem to mind the back seat ride.