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What was the best era of Casualty and The Bill?
allthingsuk
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I think Casualty was at its peak between 1996 and 2001 (Series 11-15) and The Bill at its peak from 1988 to 1998 with some excellent half-hour episodes. But what's your opinion?
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Mickey Webb was an amazing to come out of the era
Casualty was really good from the late 90s-2007. It's still quite good now, but not the same.
Yeah Series 16 and 17 when Lara was in it was quite good. Lara was an excellent character. I think after Series 17 when they changed the exterior set of the hospital, that the show changed beyond all recognition. But the show was declining for a few years before that.
Yeah the serial killer storyline with Cass Rickman was excellent. But after that, The Bill just resorted to lazy soapy plots unfortunately, with gimmicks such as the 20th Anniversary Live Episode, such gimmicks that the writers didn't need in the brilliant half-hour era.
You're absolutely right. I think though that Series 11 and 12 were absolutely fantastic, with some outstanding episodes including Josh's family dying in a fire, the motorway pile-up, the shopping centre explosion, Tina's rape, Jude's stabbing and Charlie/Baz wedding. Though series 13/14/15 were largely good, they started to introduce soapier storylines and they lacked the magic of Series 12.
I think the best era of The Bill was 1988 to 1999. Burnside started as a regular in 1988. Some of the best episodes were in 1998 and 1999.
I don't think so. Some of its best episodes were in the early 90's when DC Martella was killed, and in 1995 when DS Jo Morgan was killed. The 1998/99 episodes were very good though but I preferred the simplicity of the half-hour era.
The rapist was the husband of a patient I think.
You are absolutely right. The 1998-2000 period got the correct balance of crime storylines and the private lives of the officers. There were some excellent episodes, but I simply preferred the half-hour episodes because they focused on crime and, such was the quality of the writing that the characters' personality was shown through the way they investigated crimes so they didn't need to divulge too much into the private lives of the officers.
That series was Series 18 which started in September 2003.
Indeed it was great during the mentioned period - I enjoyed Sgt. Penny coping with the aftermath of his shooting. I watched a few 1997 episodes of The Bill like "Over the Fence" and the three-parter with Rik Mayall, "Humpty Dumpty". And despite the loss of Burnside and Roach, I found the half-hour episodes extremely enjoyable, even if ratings were dropping towards 1997 and 1998. Though, I have to say that the half-hour episodes were dull as dishwater in 1998, really quite bad, and a revamp was desperately needed.
Yeah, things changed in Series 16 because ratings had dropped 2-3 million between Series 14 and 15. Series 14 was averaging 11 million, while Series 15 was averaging only 8/9 million.