Woodentop (The Bill) Woodentop (The Bill) "Woodentop" is an episode of the Thames Television series "Storyboard", which includes a series of one-off plays on different themes. The episode was originally broadcast on 16 August 1983. "Woodentop" became the forerunner to long-running British police television series "The Bill", which went on air 14 months later and continued for 26 years. The name "woodentop" is a colloquialism for beat policemen who traditionally wear helmets; the nickname is itself an allusion to the Children's TV series "The Woodentops". The episode documents PC Jim Carver's first day at Sun Hill Police Station, where he is partnered with
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