Back to Where It Began
Posted: Thu 23 July, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Cynicism, Thoughts 2 Comments »I see that the ITV series “The Bill” is getting a lot of publicity about how it’s going from being a shitey soap-type programme down to a one-hour/episode-per-week drama series. It’s even going out post-watershed.
But what no-one seems to be commenting on is the fact that this isn’t a new thing for The Bill – in fact, that’s right where it started.
So this rethink and reschedule is really more an acknowledgement that all the fucking about with it over the last few years didn’t work, so it’s going to go back to its roots a bit, and see where it goes from there.
Personally, I hope it works out – when it first came out, The Bill was a decent police series. Maybe it’ll go back to being one again, although only time will tell on that score.
I used to love The Bill. Its initial set of narrative rules (no scenes in which police officers didn’t appear, no dwelling on the police officers’ personal lives) gave it a purity you just never saw in any other series.
Over the years it just got soapier and soapier, and more and more far-fetched and disconnected from its very grounded roots.
Shifting back in that direction can only possibly be a good thing.
and it’s one of the few ITV programmes in HD