The Bill (series 1) Mark Wingett and Robert Pugh all appeared in “Welcome Home”. <onlyinclude></onlyinclude> The Bill (series 1) The first series of "The Bill", a British television drama, consisted of eleven episodes, broadcast between 16 October 1984 and 22 January 1985. Whilst "Woodentop" used a traditional three-wall set built at Thames Television's studios at Teddington, for the series, Sun Hill Police Station was created by converting the premises of a two-storey former cigarette packing company on the corner of Artichoke Hill and Pennington Street, in Wapping, East London. The police station was significantly smaller than subsequent versions, with almost-all of the interior offices
BBC television drama major location and shot entirely on videotape and thus comparatively cheap to make, longer runs of drama series became rare, with short series of six or eight episodes becoming the norm. The single play, in its original studio-based form, also began to disappear from the schedules, with the final series of "Play for Today" airing in 1984, and the last single drama recorded at Television Centre being "Henry IV, Part 1" in 1995. The BBC was envious of the success of its rival Channel 4's newly formed film arm, which had seen made-for-television one-offs such as Stephen Frears' "My Beautiful