---
name: "Tom Clegg"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/tom-clegg-96372"
roles: ["Director"]
born: "16 October 1934"
died: "24 July 2016"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
updated: "2026-09-16T17:58:32.481874+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Tom Clegg

Director. Born 16 October 1934 in Lancashire, England. Died 24 July 2016.

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Born:** 16 October 1934, Lancashire, England
- **Died:** 24 July 2016
- **Active:** 1975–1992
- **Also known as:** Thomas Harrison Clegg, Tom Clegg (I), 톰 클레그
- **Works often with:** Peter Smith

## Fi1m on Tom Clegg

> Tom Clegg gave action weight and kept stories moving. We recommend his work on *The Sweeney*, with a reservation about how readily its brisk direction carries us past the questionable behaviour of its policemen.

In *The Sweeney* (1975), confrontations are blunt, and the violence leaves little room to admire anyone’s technique. Tom Clegg was one of the directors, alongside Douglas Camfield, who gave the programme that unpleasant physical force. We winced at the violence because it felt like people hurting one another, rather than performers demonstrating a skill. That is a substantial virtue in crime television, even when the programme’s affection for its policemen needs questioning.

John Thaw and Dennis Waterman give the series its force and humour, but the pace matters too. Editors Peter Delfgou, Ian Toynton, Chris Burt and John S. Smith keep the action readable and the exchanges brisk. Their work helps explain why the programme’s roughness does not become an excuse for careless storytelling. It also exposes the limit of that approach: the speed can carry us past questionable behaviour before we have had time to object.

Clegg moved from directing television comedy and soaps into crime and action in the early 1970s. He directed *Regan* (1974), the pilot for *The Sweeney*, then multiple episodes of the series and *Sweeney 2* (1978). He also directed and wrote the prison-break drama *McVicar* (1980), another example of his preference for convincing ensemble casts. His skill with location shooting helps explain his suitability for *The Sweeney*: those drab London surroundings give the confrontations somewhere credible to happen, without making the setting more interesting than the people in it.

The later turn to military drama gave that practical approach a longer home in *Sharpe* (1993–2008), with Sean Bean. As its principal director, Clegg treated arguments as action too, a useful safeguard against measuring excitement by the number of people running across a battlefield. *Bravo Two Zero* (1999) reunited him with Bean in a Gulf War SAS drama. Start with *The Sweeney*, provided you can enjoy its pace without accepting every excuse it makes for the police.

## Biography

Tom Clegg was a British television and film director. Born Thomas Harrison Clegg on 16 October 1934 in Lancashire, England, he performed national service in the Royal Air Force between 1952 and 1954. He began his career as a cameraman in the 1960s, working for Granada and ABC Television, before moving into directing.

Clegg directed the 1974 pilot episode Regan and many episodes of the series *The Sweeney* (1975–78). He also directed the feature film *Sweeney 2* (1978) and *McVicar* (1980). He was one of the principal directors on the long-running Sharpe series (1993–2008) and worked on other series including *Space: 1999* (1975–77), *The Professionals* (1977), *Hammer House of Horror* (1980) and *Bravo Two Zero* (1999). He died on 24 July 2016.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, theguardian.com, telegraph.co.uk, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *The Sweeney* (1975), Fi1m 84, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-sweeney.md)

## Also credited on (not yet reviewed)

- *Between the Lines* (1992), Director
- *Boon* (1986), Director

## Also known for

- *Agatha Christie's Poirot* (1989), Director
- *Space: 1999* (1975), Director
- *Hammer House of Horror* (1980), Director
- *Sharpe's Rifles* (1993), Director
- *The Professionals* (1977), Director
- *Bravo Two Zero* (1999), Director
- *McVicar* (1980), Director, Writer
- *Sharpe's Challenge* (2006), Director

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/tom-clegg-96372