In 1971, Euston Films was established as a production company by three Thames executives Lloyd Shirley, George Taylor and Brian Tesler.
[2] Following the establishment of Thames Television in 1968, this style of production was trialed with two one-off dramas "Suspect" (1969) and "Rumour" (1970) which were promoted under the ITV Playhouse strand, along with the children's series The Tyrant King.
[6] Jeremy Issacs who was then Director of Programmes at Thames, was favourable about Euston Films work on the series and decided to commission them to revive the then ailing Armchair Theatre.
One of the films that was produced, "Regan" by Kennedy Martin, that starred John Thaw as DI Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as DS George Carter, gained a favourable response with viewers with audiences of over seven million tuning into the episode, and was successful enough to be commissioned into a full series The Sweeney, that ran between 1975-1978 and additionally produced two spin-off feature films that were released in 1977 and 1978 respectively.
[13] The complete series of Armchair Cinema was subsequently released on DVD, on 31 August 2009 by Network,[14] along with the television films "The Sailor's Return" (1978) and "Charlie Muffin" (1979).