Agreed. The CID half-hour episodes were pretty good and tightly written on the whole, and I feel that some of the recent CID episodes, notably Long Term Investment and Chasing Shadows, would have worked much more effectively as half-hour episodes.


Yep I have seen the figures. Huge improvement for The Bill on where it was in the summer of 1998 slumping to huge lows of 6 million in the last episodes of the half-hour era, and even the summer of 1997 where ratings were down at the 7 million mark. Having said that, the 11m figures were courtesy of a Corrie lead-in on Friday nights, and weren't that much higher, if at all, than the half-hour episodes shown in early 1997.

The revamp to hour-long episodes was to halt the ratings slide that the show had endured for much of 1997 and early 1998 to around 8/9 million, and while it succeeded temporarily, ratings soon dropped in 2000 as well to around 7/8 million from 10 million.

I remember reading in the Sun that the actress playing Viv was being killed off (can't remember the exact reason now was t something like the new producers didn't like her?)

Cathy Marshall was a shock because it just happened early into an episode. I wish it was on Youtube because I haven't seen it since the original run!

Just watched todays episode with Kerry in prison. That was one of the better CID episodes with less padding. Although the advert break came after the "lets go to the showers". I guess they cut out the naked Kerry in a shower scene lol

I can remember when The Bill was getting something like 15m viewers in 1995 though that was under the old method of estimating audiences which was done through the use of diaries. When BARB began to use real time data through the use of specially adapted TV sets (was this in 1996?) viewing figures for TV programmes across the board fell overnight and I think The Bill started to get figures below 10m.

Around the high point of the viewing figures for The Bill (around 1993 to 1995) ITV made an unpopular move in introducing a half hour episode on a Saturday evening. The viewing figures for the Saturday night episode were lower than the for the week day episodes. Looking at The Bill entry at uk.imdb.com the Saturday night episodes ran from April 1993 to January 1994. This episode was then moved to a weekday night. As I regularly used to go out on a Saturday night and I didn't have a video player at the time it meant that I usually missed these Saturday night episodes.

To be fair, The Bill did achieve 14-15 million audiences in 1996, probably the last time it did so. But the drop in figures below 10 million in the mid 90s probably proved that viewers didn't necessarily want an all-crime half-hour format. Perhaps if we had the 1998 revamp three years earlier in 1995, with a mix of soapy and crime stories and the half-hour format still in place, we could have been looking at 18-19 million audiences in 1995, instead of the 9-10 million achieved in 1998.

Casualty achieved 18 million in 1995-1996 when it was arguably in one of its soapiest eras. The Bill didn't take advantage of a potentially huge audience but even so, to be achieving 16 million with a format that didn't have continuing storylines, was very impressive.

And onto my thoughts of today's episodes, very gritty episode today. I took to Holmes today and the ending was a bit predictable as I knew Holmes would be out of trouble, but still gripping all the same. The story was strong enough to last the hour so that's good. One thing though - is Holmes a lesbian, because that's the impression I was getting from today's episode?

Anyway, 8/10. Good effort.


Yes, the episode "Judgement Call" which was an hour-long special. Very unexpected, especially as we didn't actually see her die, but it was referred to that she fell into some water. Great episode though.

I watched "Team Play" this morning. An excellent episode. I loved that screentime was split between uniform doing a refresher training course and the CID investigation.

I really liked the CID investigation in this episode. The actors were very good. The victim's anguish was well portrayed, and the culprit was very suitably creepy. There were some excellent lines. Also, Liz Rawton was at the centre of investigating it all and she's one of my favourite characters from this era. I like how Tom Proctor was trying to prove himself to his other colleagues as well.

Nice to see the tension between Santini and his colleagues still brewing underneath the surface.

This episode joins my list of favourite episodes so far.

I watched the one about the arsonist fireman last-night (can't remember the name of it now), where they got that woman profiler in to help, wasn't that Lester Ford Prefect from Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy ?

Think it was called "Heat and Light" IIRC.

Interesting to see that drama are showing the bill tomorrow morning... UKTV usually give the repeats a break for the bank holiday and watch haven't got an episode??

Yes, the Bill is missing from WATCH on Monday 26th, but on Tuesday 27th there is a 2-parter called TEENAGE KICKS which begins at 9:00 and continues at 10:00. So there's only one chance to catch Part 1 (except on Watch+1).

Ahh I see... Does anyone else agree with my theory that they are using drama as a taster for these repeats and that they will move to watch once the current run ends on there?? I have just worked out that watch are going to have to rewind when they start again after Christmas and Drama will have just finished 1999 at the exact same time... Could it be that watch will go back to 2000?? I can't see watch showing 2002 and Drama only being 2 years behind? Not unless watch do their usual trick and show 2007 onwards AGAIN!!!

Do you really think that much planning goes into it?

Yeah, from speaking to them in the past they work it out when each run will come to an end which is why watch went back the the exact episode of 2004 that they did in 2012.... That way they knew they would be at the end of the show by Christmas this year so they could rewind again in January 2014. This is also the reason that when they were running the storyline regarding that missing girl and a young girl actually went missing in the uk... They didn't show the bill for a few days and then had a week of double episodes later in the year to catch up! Of course TV networks put thought into their scheduling otherwise they might aswell just drop all the tapes and shove them on whichever order they are picked up!

I can't remember if the role was explicitly played as a lesbian outside the prison story, but remember the fuss at the time as the actress Joy Brook playing Kerry Holmes was bisexual and remember the press stories at the time. Lesbian cop in prison story is a real lesbian.

You have more faith that I do, but you've obviously studied it more closely than I have so I accept what you say. It's not correct, however, that they didn't show The Bill for several days due to the topical events to which you refer; they simply skipped each episode that referred to that storyline and ploughed on regardless making a nonsense of the continuity.

Was there really that much of a fuss over the actress being bisexual? I was so young at the time so didn't see the episodes when they first aired, but I'd be really interested in reading some articles.

I've watched Heat and Light and Ticking Clocks today. Both enjoyable episodes, especially Ticking Clocks. I like the profiler that comes in, who adds a different perspective to the cases and her scenes with Boulton were really fun to watch.

Yesterday's episode, "Walking on Water" was superb. One of the darker CID episodes, gritty and well-written. I really wanted Daly to go to the DCI to report Beech as it would have been a natural conclusion to a year-long storyline. It was a shame that Clare Stanton would go on to hijack what should have been Daly's big storyline. Beech sailing closer and closer to the wind. I have noticed all of the 1999 episodes so far have been CID based, which is odd. Hoping for some uniform based episodes soon.

9/10.

Loved today's show, but only because I had a crush on Vicky Hagen.

She looked fantastic in today's episode

Speaking of today's episode, decent episode. First uniform episode of the year. Almost set entirely away from the police station apart from the first 5 minutes. It was a bit of a non-story when it was found the jockey double-crossed them but the Garfield/Hagen pairing looks like a good one. Again, story was a bit slow to start off but picked up towards the end. 6/10.

And I think this was Jamila's last episode. She was practically an extra in that episode. What an inconspicuous way to go...although characters vanishing in The Bill was not unusual. Happened a lot in the mid 90s with Ch. Insp Stritch, and more recently as regards to the episodes being shown, Debbie Keane.

How and when was Debbie Keane written out? She was my second favourite character!

I note "Age Of Chivalry" featuring Burnside and Rawton is being omitted next week. Shame on UK-Drama!

Also it appears that the episodes available on-line at dailymotion have now been removed following the crackdown on YouTube a couple of months back, so there's nowhere to go now to catch up on omitted episodes.

Boyden got a lucky escape there. Still he didn't learn his lesson as he dated Nixon's daughter in years to come!

Is there something in the episode which makes it unsuitable for the 9am screening even with the cuts they are applying ? Or are Drama just omitting episodes at random.

Who knows? This is the first omission since they started.

Ive just checked daily motion and the episodes are there still. They are up to season four now.