The Bill
British police procedural television series
The Bill is a British police procedural television series, broadcast on ITV from 16 October 1984 until 31 August 2010. The programme originated from a one-off drama, "Woodentop" (part of the Storyboard series), broadcast on 16 August 1983. ITV were so impressed with the drama that a full series was commissioned. The title originates from "Old Bill", a slang term for the police and show creator Geoff McQueen's original title for the series.
The Bill focuses on the lives and work of one shift of police officers of all ranks, and the storylines deal with situations faced by uniformed officers working on the beat, as well as plainclothes detectives. Producers initially wanted to replicate the "day in the life" feature of Woodentop, and made sure a police officer was featured in every single scene. The series later adopted a much more serialised approach, and a revamp in 2002 led to more of a soap-opera feel to many of its stories. The Bill began with a regular cast of 13 members, with only two of these being uniformed women. In total, 174 actors have formed part of the series' main cast.
Throughout its 26-year run, the programme was always broadcast on the main ITV channel.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Bill” is british police procedural television series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bill, British and police, not as a finished interpretation.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q929589. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 2010, 1983 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Bill” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.