The Bill

The Bill

The Bill is a long-running British television police procedural shown on ITV1 (aka ITV), at 9pm, recently moved to Tuesdays.

Past episodes can also be seen on Drama and Watch in the UK. In Australia, the last episode of the show was shown on ABC 1, on 16 October 2010. Shown in Ireland by RTÉ One. As of May 2020, a boxset known as The Bill: The Early Years is available on UKTV Play.

The setting is the Sun Hill district of the fictional London borough of Canley. Other police stations in the borough, mentioned but (usually) never seen, are Barton Street, which is the location of Borough Headquarters, Stafford Row and Spicer Street. Canley is approximately contiguous with the real London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and 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 C.I.D..

The Bill started as a one-off drama for ITV's Thames Television series Storyboard; which was a short season of one-off dramas from Thames Television, the company behind some of ITV's most important dramas in the 1970s and 1980s. Five of these dramas were picked up as a full series including a police drama entitled Woodentop; this pilot show starred Mark Wingett as P.C. Jim Carver and Trudie Goodwin as W.P.C. 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.

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.

The Bill was axed on March 26, 2010 by ITV. The long-running series wrapped filming on June 14, 2010 and the final episode aired on ITV on August 31, 2010.

Broadcasting and production[]

Filming locations[]

Throughout the series, there have been 3 (later 4) filming locations for Sun Hill police station. From the first series, the police station consisted of a set of buildings in Artichoke Hill, Wapping, East London. However, these buildings were next to the News International plant and during the winter of 1985–86 there was much industrial action which resulted in some altercations between the strikers and actors working on The Bill who were mistaken for real officers. Working conditions got so dire that the production team realised they needed to find another base to set Sun Hill police station.

The second location was an old record distribution depot in Barlby Road, North Kensington in North West London. Filming began here in March 1987. In 1989, the owners of the Barlby Road site ordered The Bill out, due to their redevelopment plans for the area. After an extensive search, two sites were selected, the favourite being a disused hospital in Clapham. However, this fell through and the second option was chosen—an old wine distribution warehouse in Merton, South West London. The move was made in March 1990 and was disguised on screen by the "ongoing" refurbishment of Sun Hill police station and then finally the explosion of a terrorist car-bomb in the station car-park, which ended up killing PC Ken Melvin.

Filming for the series took place all over London, mainly in South London and particularly the London Borough of Merton, where the Sun Hill set was located. Locations used when the show was filmed on a housing estate included:

Cambridge Estate, in Kingston, south-west London
High Path Estate, in South Wimbledon, south-west London (approx. 10-minute walk from the Sun Hill set)
Alton Estate, in Roehampton, south-west London
Phipps Bridge, Mitcham
Roundshaw Estate in Wallington, London
Sutton Estate, which includes Durand Close in Carshalton, where a housing block regularly used by The Bill for filming was demolished in November 2009.

Scenes were often filmed in east London, most notably the London Docklands, with other scenes filmed in Tooting, Greenwich and Croydon. In 2008, the episode "Demolition Girl" was filmed in The Gorbals, Glasgow.

The set of Sun Hill police station at Wimbledon Studios remained until mid 2013 when it was finally dismantled.

The Bill is set in and around the Sun Hill police station, in the fictional "Canley Borough Operational Command Unit" in East London. Geoff McQueen, creator of The Bill, claimed that he named Sun Hill after a street name in his home town of Royston, Hertfordshire.

The main location in The Bill is the Sun Hill police station, which has been used since the show's inception. Recurring and major locations include the Sun Hill Leisure Centre, the Sun Hill Shopping Centre, the Sun Hill market, the Sun Hill Junior School, and Sunhill Medical Center.