The Bill

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The Bill
Genre	Police procedural/Drama
Creator(s)	Geoff McQueen
Starring	Approx. 25 regulars
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	2150 (as of February 22, 2007) (List of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	talkbackTHAMES
Running time	Approx. 60 mins. per episode (including adverts)
Broadcast
Original channel	ITV1
Original run	August 16, 1983 (Pilot), October 16, 1984 – Present
Chronology
Related shows	MIT: Murder Investigation Team Burnside Beech is Back
Links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

The Bill is a long-running British television police procedural first shown on ITV1, at 8pm, usually on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The omnibus edition of the show can be seen on ITV3. Past episodes can also be seen on UKTV Gold. In Australia, the show is shown on the ABC, with older repeats also shown on UKTV. It screens in Ireland on RTÉ One. In New Zealand new episodes are broadcast on UKTV twice a week while repeats of older episodes are shown every weekday evening tagged as "The Bill Classics".

The setting is the Sun Hill district of the fictional London borough of Canley. Other police stations in the borough, mentioned but (usually) unseen, are Barton Street, which is the location of Borough Headquarters, and Stafford Row. Canley is approximately contiguous with the real London Borough of Tower Hamlets, but filming takes place all over London, with many locations in South and East London and notably the London Docklands standing in for Canley. Canley is also the name of a real district within the city of Coventry, some 100 miles north of London.

The Bill is unusual among police shows: it takes a serial format and it does not focus on one particular area of police work. Instead, the show's time is divided between the work of officers on one shift in the uniform division, and the work of the CID. In its current serial format, some stories are cleared up in an episode or two, whereas others can stretch over months or even in some cases (such as the recent case of 7 year old Amy Tennant, who went missing and was assumed to be dead, but was eventually found alive and well) approaching a year.

It started as a one-off drama for ITV entitled Woodentop; this pilot show starred Mark Wingett as PC Jim Carver and Trudie Goodwin as WPC June Ackland on Carver's first day on the beat at Sun Hill police station. It was originally devised by Geoff McQueen, and it impressed ITV so much that they decided to make a series out of it. Wingett left the cast in early 2005, while Goodwin's last episode was broadcast on 8 March 2007 (coincidentally the last episode since the serialised format was introduced by Paul Marquess to be broadcast without an episode title).

In October 2003, a special episode of The Bill was broadcast live from its London studios to mark the show's 20th year on air. At 8pm on Thursday, 22 September 2005 another episode was broadcast live to mark the ITV Network's 50th anniversary. The episode was written by Graham Mitchell and co-produced and directed by Sylvie Boden.

Contents 1 History 2 Characters 2.1 Senior Officers 2.2 Inspectors 2.3 Sergeants 2.4 Uniform constables 2.5 Detective constables 2.6 Police Staff 2.7 Upcoming character changes 3 DVD releases 3.1 UK 3.2 Australia 4 Trivia 5 Spin-offs 6 Other versions 7 References 8 See also 9 External links

[edit] History

Main article: History of The Bill

Following the pilot in 1983, the first proper episode of The Bill was transmitted in 1984. Starting with hour-long separate storylines, The Bill went on to be half an hour in length between 1987 and 1998 before going back to hour-long episodes. From 1998 until 2002, The Bill became more serialised, and when Paul Marquess took over in 2002 The Bill almost became a "police-soap". Under Johnathan Young, who took over as executive producer in 2005, the more sensational and sometimes unrealistic storylines have been dropped, with more time being spent on crime storylines.

[edit] Characters

Main article: List of The Bill characters

The Bill features approximately 24 regular characters at any one time. The cast is comprised of the senior officers, along with 2 or 3 Uniform Sergeants, 2 or 3 Detective Sergeants, between 7 and 12 Uniform PCs and between 4 and 6 Detective Constables and Between 1 and 3 Staff This is the list of the current regular characters:

[edit] Senior Officers

• Superintendent John Heaton (Daniel Flynn)
• DCI Jack Meadows (Simon Rouse)

[edit] Inspectors

• Inspector Gina Gold (Roberta Taylor)
• DI Neil Manson (Andrew Lancel)
• DI Samantha Nixon (Lisa Maxwell)

[edit] Sergeants

• DS Phil Hunter (Scott Maslen)
• DS Stuart Turner (Doug Rao)
• Sgt. Dale Smith (Alex Walkinshaw)
• Sgt. Nikki Wright (Gillian Taylforth)

[edit] Uniform constables

• PC Dan Casper (Chris Jarvis)
• PC Will Fletcher (Gary Lucy)
• PC Lewis Hardy (Aml Ameen)
• PC Emma Hinkley (Melanie Gutteridge)
• PC Reg Hollis (Jeff Stewart)
• PC Diane Noble (Kaye Wragg)
• PC Tony Stamp (Graham Cole)
• PC Roger Valentine (John Bowler)
• PC Leela Kapoor (Seema Bowri)

[edit] Detective constables

• DC Jo Masters (Sally Rogers)
• DC Terry Perkins (Bruce Byron)
• Trainee DC Kezia Walker (Cat Simmons)
• DC Mickey Webb (Chris Simmons)

[edit] Police Staff

• CPS Solicitor Matt Hinkley (Mark Dexter)
• Directorate of Public Affairs Officer Mia Perry (Jo Anne Knowles)

[edit] Upcoming character changes

The cast will be changing in the following ways over the next few months:

• PC Beth Green (Louisa Lytton) (Arriving May 2007) [1]
• DC Grace Desari (Amita Dhiri) (Arrives June 2007) [2]
• PC Sally Armstrong (Ali Bastian) (Arrives July 2007) [3]

[edit] DVD releases

[edit] UK

• Series 1 & 2 have been released
• Series 3 is set for release on 28 May 2007
• Series 4 & 5 are yet to be confirmed

[edit] Australia

• Seasons 1,2 and 3. 12 Disc Super Wallet (36 episodes including the pilot)
• Seasons 4 and 5. 12 Disc Super Wallet (48 episodes)
• Seasons 6 and 7. 12 Disc Super Wallet (?? episodes) Yet to be confirmed

• The next release is scheduled for August 2007.

[edit] Trivia

• The white police uniform shirts are washed with a black sock, to prevent too much glare when seen on-screen.^[1]
• One of creator Geoff McQueen's rules was that every single scene would feature police officers, to make the stories feel as if they are being told through the eyes of the police. Hence breakaway scenes, with a crime being committed or criminals planning their movements, are not featured. However, the first series (1984) particularly does not always follow this rule. One grey area was in late 2006 when the character of Nikki Wright (Gillian Taylforth) was introduced; she was the only officer featured in some scnes before she had become a Sun Hill Officer, although was at the time working at a neighbouring station. One recent example of the rule being broken was in the episode "Killer On The Run" (broadcast on 22nd March 2007) where scenes outside of the Officers' perspective followed a gunman named Ryan Jones - who had a personal grudge against Sgt. Dale Smith - on the run from the police. There were several intercut scenes with him roaming the streets, and a scene where he broke into Smithy's mother's house and threatened his mother at gunpoint. Usually the stories exclusively follow Sun Hill Officers.
• Another rule implemented at the start of the series, was that stories would follow only the work of the Officers, and not feature their outside life (unless directly linked to their work). As the series has progressed, through its several revamps, this rule has gradually been relaxed.
• All names of police-officers on The Bill are vetted with the Metropolitan Police to ensure that names of real serving police officers are not used.^[1]
• The Bill has been broadcast in over 55 different countries, from Bahrain to Barbados, Denmark to Dubai, Malaysia to Mauritius, and Spain to Sweden and is very popular in Australia and New Zealand. In Sweden the show was retitled Sunhillspolisstation (Sun Hill Police Station) by broadcaster TV4.
• The plodding feet that adorned the show's credits for 15 years were originally intended to be those of Trudie Goodwin (June Ackland) and Mark Wingett, (Jim Carver). But they were too busy filming other scenes so two extras were recruited instead - Karen England and Paul Page Hanson.^[1]
• Prince William has admitted that he enjoys The Bill and June Ackland is his favourite.^{[citation needed]}
• The police uniforms used in the series are genuine and are locked away for security reasons every night with no complete uniform being locked in any one cupboard.
• In the early days of The Bill a local resident registered her protest at what she deemed to be a stereotypical portrayal of council estates as hotbeds of crime. She held up filming by stationing herself in the background with an ironing board, iron and basket full of laundry.
• Real police officers took such a dim view of previews they were shown from the first series of The Bill that they refused to attend the launch party. The Police Federation later attacked the programme for implying that racial prejudice existed within the Force.
• When filming on location, The Bill does not have permission to use sirens. These are added in the dubbing suite.^[1]
• The doors of Custody are made of plywood, with the resounding "bang" also being added in the dubbing suite.^[1]
• Tony Blair and his family recently came out as fans of The Bill.^{[citation needed]}
• 2006 is the first year since 2001 that has not involved the death of a police officer in the series.
• Sarah Tansey, who plays the re-occurring role of missing 7 year old Amy Tennant's step-mother Ruth Barker, is married to Hywel Simons, who played Sergeant Craig Gilmore until 2003.
• In an on-going storyline of Gina Gold having a romantic fling with businessman Peter Harris, who turned out to be married, Roberta Taylor played opposite her real-life husband Peter Guiness.
• The first line spoken in Woodentop was Jim Carver (Mark Wingett), saying "Okay Carver, let's do this" as he got out of bed. An almost identical scene with the same line opened the episode where Jim married Sgt. June Ackland in 2004. They were also the final words spoken by the character when he left the series in 2005.
• The opening titles used from around 2003 until 2007 included a shadowed stylised map of London, with areas supposedly showing police districts. These are actually a scan of the 'key to pages' found at the start of the London A-Z. Looking carefully at the titles one can clearly see the words "Large scale section [pages] 158-173".
• The Bill is recorded at Bosun House which is the building portrayed as Sun Hill Police Station instead of a studio set. Bosun House is situated in South Wimbledon,London
• The fictional telephone number of the station located on the notice board at the front desk is 020 7511 1642.
• In the 2005 live episode, since the action was filmed live in a London borough, crowds of people watching the filming can be seen behind some of the action at the front of the station. Also, in the scene where the car flips over, a boom mike operator can be seen running across the screen, apparently unaware that he is being filmed.

[edit] Spin-offs

The Bill has spawned three spin-off productions.

The first of these was known as Burnside. It lasted a single series of six episodes, the first of which debuted on 7 July 2000. The series focused on the newly promoted DCI Burnside as a member of the National Crime Squad. It was created and produced by Richard Handford.

The second spin-off debuted in 2001, and also lasted only six episodes, although was more of a break away from the regular Bill (it was shown in the Bill timeslot) than a complete spin-off. Beech is Back focused on dodgy ex-DS Don Beech, still on the run from Claire Stanton who wants him brought to justice for the murder of her boyfriend DS John Boulton. None of the episodes were given titles, with each being part of a single six part serial. At the end Beech is brought to justice and sent to prison, although he would return in The Bill years later.

In 2003, ITV1 debuted the third spin-off of the show, entitled MIT: Murder Investigation Team. The first episode investigated the drive-by shooting of Sgt. Matthew Boyden, who had been at Sun Hill for eleven years. The first series consisted of ten one-hour episodes. The second series was filmed in 2004, but not shown until two years later, and consisted of four ninety-minute episodes. It featured Eva Sharpe (Diane Parish) from The Bill, who had transferred to MIT. (Before it was broadcast, it was also rumoured to feature Chris Simmons as Mickey Webb, who had recently departed from The Bill, but these rumours turned out to be false). The series was created by Paul Marquess. The second series was produced by Jonathan Young.

[edit] Other versions

A German version of The Bill, utilising original Bill scripts was produced for RTL Television from 1994 to 2006. It was called Die Wache. [4] [5]

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} Silver, Rachel (1999). The Bill: The Inside Story: Behind the Scenes of Britain's Top Police Drama. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-257137-1. 

[edit] See also

• List of The Bill episodes
• List of The Bill cast members
• Beech on the Run
• The Sun Hill Fire (2002)
• The Sun Hill Fire (2005)
• The Don Beech Scandal
• The Bill's Live Episodes

[edit] External links

• The Bill at itv.com
• Discussion Forum. Chat about The Bill!
• The Bill at the Internet Movie Database
• The Bill at TV.com
• Topps the Bill
• The Bill unofficial fansite
• Any Previous
• British Film Institute Screen Online
• The Bill Wiki
• Who Killed The Old Bill - Australian radio documentary on the changes to the series in 2002 under Paul Marquess