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The Bill: Difference between revisions
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[[File:The_Bill_2297.jpg|frame|WPC Ackland and PC Carver, out on their beat.]]
{{quote|''"Sierra One from Sierra Oscar"''...}}
Britain's longest running police drama (1983 pilot called "Woodentop", then a regular series which ran from 1984 until 2010), ''[[The Bill]]'' told the story of A-Relief, one of the regular shifts in the divisional police station of Sun Hill, located in the fictional borough of Canley, East London. The series followed both uniform and plain clothes officers -- though the storylines were usually skewed more towards the uniform branch -- as they investigated crimes around "the manor". These crimes could be anything from high-end drug deals and gun running, right down to petty shoplifting, or relatively minor domestic squabbles between neighbors.
Originally a [[Police Procedural]] whose strict aim was to show the dull minutiae of policing, its modus operandi was not unlike that of ''[[Hill Street Blues]]''. The use of [[Leave the Camera Running|long single camera takes]], shooting the series on raw videotape rather than glossy film, and the ubiquitous use of [[Steadicam]] gave viewers a genuine insight into what it must be like to work inside a real police station. The series became widely seen as a [[Crime-Time Soap]] as the years went on, however, especially after Paul Marquess took over as Executive Producer in 2002. Marquess left the series in 2005, after which the show moved considerably back towards being a [[Police Procedural]].
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The series had been suffering a gradual decline in its viewing figures (especially after the time-slot change), and its long-term future was seen as uncertain, especially after it was dropped from terrestrial TV in Scotland as part of a broader problem with STV, the Scottish version of [[ITV]]. Its cancellation was announced on 26 March 2010, and the show ended in September of that year. In the same year, The BBC's equivalent [[Long Runner]], the sitcom ''[[Last of the Summer Wine]]'' (actually a decade older than ''The Bill'') was also announced to be ending, bringing the end of an era of British television to many (and, if you count in the end of the American [[Long Runner]] ''[[Law and Order]]'', this gets global).
'''This show is notable for:'''
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Absentee Actor]]: A side-effect of having [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]. Sometimes a character who you'd expect to be seeing all the time could go missing for dozens of episodes at a time before turning up again.
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[[Category:Crime and Punishment Series]]
[[Category:The Bill]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bill, The}}
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