Woodentop (The Bill) "Woodentop" has an unusual place in the history of "The Bill" due to the original premise of this being a one-off play. After broadcast, Thames commissioned a full series to be shown the following year, under the name "The Bill" as the show had the potential to appeal to a mass audience. Although "The Bill" is clearly a continuation from this episode, the main series contradicts it in a number of ways. For instance, in Woodentop Litten has completed his secondment to CID and is close to securing his place in the detective branch, whereas in "The Bill" he does
BBC television drama is to say, good television entertainment." The overwhelming majority of BBC television drama produced during the 1930s consisted of adaptations of stage plays, but there were exceptions. These included the first multi-episodic drama serial, "Ann and Harold", a five-part story about a married couple which began showing on 12 July 1938. There was also "Telecrime", a series of ten- and twenty-minute plays which presented various crimes, with the viewers given enough clues to be able to solve themselves using the evidence shown on screen and the specially-written drama "Condemned To Be Shot" (1939). As with almost all programmes of the