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
The Cops (TV series) a third series, creator Robert Jones later confirmed that the third series was written as a way of 'bringing "The Cops" to a close', with the final episode broadcast on 11 April 2001. The first series was released on VHS on 24 January 2000, available as four individual volumes or as a complete box set. Both the second and third series remain commercially unreleased. All three series received a single re-run on UKTV Drama in the early 2000s, although remain unrepeated since. The programme won back-to-back British Academy Television Awards in the Best Drama Series category in 1999 and 2000,