The Bill The Bill The Bill is a British police procedural television series, first broadcast on ITV from 16 October 1984 until 31 August 2010. The programme originated from a one-off drama, "Woodentop", broadcast in August 1983. In its final year on air, "The Bill" was broadcast once a week, usually on Tuesdays or Thursdays, in a one-hour format. The programme focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work. "The Bill" was the longest-running police procedural television series in the United Kingdom, and among the longest running of any
BBC television drama "Brimstone and Treacle" and "Scum" were eventually transmitted some years later. Whenever writers and media analysts criticise the current state of British and particularly BBC television drama, it is frequently the 1960s and 1970s period which they cite as being the most important and influential, with a vast variety of genres (science fiction, crime, historical, family based) and types of programme (series, serials, one-offs, anthologies) being produced. "What may justly be rated as the golden age of television drama reached its zenith," as "The Guardian" described it in their 2004 obituary of Sutton. Or in the words of the Royal