Lockdown, Lowdown… Looking Back at the Hit British TV Series “The Bill” (1984-2010)

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

It was the longest running cop show on British TV. Over 2,000 episodes and over 20 seasons.

I attended workshops on directing in the theatre by one of the men who directed episodes of it and my son once performed alongside one of its principal stars.

It was an institution and when it was cancelled one of its actors almost ended up in an institution, so distraught was he at its ending.

The final program was an event. The final shot, one of the biggest and most complex of any televisual drama.

There were generations of characters who graced it and went on to bigger things, there were many actors who got their first television contract through it and at the end of it all it left a chasm that has, as yet, still to be filled.

It has, however fueled rumor’s that it is coming back.

I for one shall have my remote poised to watch it.

The Bill was a weekly, twice weekly, weekday nightly, half hour, full hour, special program experience in our living rooms for 26 series and 2,425 episodes.

In the fictional station of Sun Hill, London, we had the full panoply of dodgy people characters, underworld kingpins and those to whom we would never entrust anything of value.
And then there were the villains.

It was a cop show that went beyond the stereotypes by becoming more of a cop opera. We had our favorites, Tosh Lyons, Tony Stamp, Meadows, Burnside, ever suffering June Ackland.

It began life in the 1980’s when we could argue that life was simpler – it wasn’t. That it ran into the 21st century, up until 2010 was testimony to a few things. Mostly it was the writing and storylines that had an archway built into the format allowing us to follow one thing after another with ease. Shooting was tight and compact, and it never really thought it was something which it wasn’t. It attracted a lot of admirers simply because it told a story well – a simple formula that kept people coming back.

There were controversies, of course. Once they had a fictional multiple sclerosis treatment, a gay kiss, a gay rape, never shied away from the more violent elements of televisual drama and even had the police station blown up at one point. it may even have been when new contracts were being negotiated…

It won awards galore and aplenty for its gritty drama and for its realistic actors. Of course, it had its fair share of tragedy off screen too.

There were actors as well as the one who attempted suicide when he was axed, who managed to give tabloid editors a headline or two with alcoholism and the soap style nature of the format was grist to their mill. But it never managed the heights of other televisual scandals. It was always, on the right side.

The finale included a closing speech that was delivered by a long standing member of the cast, character Jack Meadows. The final episode, entitled Respect and dedicated to the hard working real policemen and women was an iconic moment. There were plenty of stars when the final sweep of the camera took us out the station and panned back to show a working station looking for its future. Pity it was all artifice and not real but that’s show biz for ye!

And future Hollywood stars including Kiera Knightley, Russel Brand, James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, David Tennant and even the frontman from The Who, Roger Daltrey all got a pay check for appearing!

The whole thing was part of your weekly viewing habit. It managed to spin off series in |Holland and Germany and given that it was a commercial program – ITV were its natural home – the rival BBC tried hard to imitate and rival it, but they could not come close. It was our British Hill Street Blues and we loved it.

But as the sun came down and the clapperboard sounded for the last time, we found our crime drama more trans-Atlantic – The USA provided plenty to take its place. When a reboot or a return was suggested, there were plenty who were filled with glee. I don’t know if there has ever been a completely successful return for any TV drama. There have been successes like Magnum PI or Hawaii Five-oh, but the UK has not got the same story to tell. What I cannot wait for – is to see if we can manage to get it back and manage a return to its full glory…

British television is a curious affair. Begun through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) it is funded through the universal license fee. In essence, if you wanted to watch the television , you had to pay the license fee. The BBC got it all and is state run, albeit at arms-length. Then came along commercial television in the form of the Independent Television (ITV) in 1955. Designed to bring a bit of competition to the BBC, it was paid for through advertising but still free to air… well they didn’t add another license fee to it. By the time that I was born, 1965, there was BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. And that was it. It was still years before Bruce Springsteen would moan that there were 55 channels and nothing on but here in the UK, we kept this going until in 1982, we added a fourth channel and in 1997, a fifth. With sparkling imagination, they were called Channel Four and ehm Channel Five… In between came Sky and we understood what Springsteen meant. And so, my childhood and leading up to early adulthood we had three options… But the programs made were exceptionally good. And so, here is some critical nostalgia as the lockdown has brought a plethora of reruns, new formats and platforms and old classics trying to make their way back into our consciousness as broadcasters flood their schedules with classics… or are they classics at all? Let me take you through an armchair critics’ view of what we have to see, to find out… Welcome to the Lockdown Lowdown…

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