The Bill was broadcast on ITV under the title "Woodentop" on 16 August 1983. "Woodentop" starred Mark Wingett as PC Jim Carver and Trudie Goodwin as WPC June Ackland of London's Metropolitan Police, both attached to the fictional Sun Hill police station. Although originally only intended as a one-off, "Woodentop" impressed ITV to the extent that a full series was commissioned, first broadcast on 16 October 1984 with one post-watershed episode per week, featuring an hour-long, separate storyline for each episode of the first three series. The first episode of the full series was "Funny Ol' Business – Cops & Robbers". With
Television Centre, London for such productions rapidly declined with the last major drama series to be shot there being "The House of Eliott", which ended in 1994, and the last single drama recorded was "Henry IV, Part 1", in 1995. This was because drama production moved almost entirely onto film or single-camera video, and Television Centre was a video-based, multi-camera production environment. At 19:00 on 22 March 2013, a special edition of "The One Show" was broadcast from the front of Television Centre followed by the building's last live broadcast "Madness Live: Goodbye Television Centre" and special programming to mark the end of