Police community support officer Bill never again portrayed PCSOs despite their common presence in real life. Paul Abbott's long-running drama series "Shameless" occasionally features police community support officers, for example, in Series 8 Episode 19, a PCSO is seen getting out of a police vehicle and chasing Aidan Croker. Hollyoaks the long-running British television soap opera, on Channel 4 featured for many years Carmel McQueen played by Gemma Merna who was portrayed as being a PCSO between 2009 and 2010. PCSOs have also featured in a few comedy sketch programmes including Season 3, Episode 1 of "That Mitchell and Webb Look". PCSOs were featured
Soap opera opera parody programs "Echo Beach" premiered alongside its sister show, the comedy "Moving Wallpaper". Both "Echo Beach" and "The Royal Today" ended after just one series due to low ratings. Radio soap opera "Silver Street" debuted on the BBC Asian Network in 2004. Poor ratings and criticism of the program led to its cancellation in 2010. UK soap operas for many years usually only aired two nights a week. The exception was the original "Crossroads", which began as a weekdaily soap opera in the 1960s, but later had its number of weekly broadcasts reduced. Things started to change in 1989