OT: Farewell to The Bill

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Watched the final episode last night with mixed emotions. I worked on the pilot some 27 years ago and have worked on it off and on up to my retirement last year. So more than half my working life.

I used to be an avid viewer too in the early days, but went off it when it became a soap, and have only watched the occasional episode since.

But thought the last two part eps pretty good. Perhaps lacking the reality in the acting of the early days. I could well believe some of the earlier characters really were the police - later they all just seemed to be acting.

But the last shot was true 'Bill' - hand held and ending up on a crane. The sort of thing it was famous for - before 'style' became more important than showing what was going on.

It was such a contrast to the Agatha Christie I watched on Sunday. The sort of prog where you shouldn't be able to go wrong - costume drama, pretty locations, based on a well written book - but totally messed up by a poor adaptation.

When will 'they' realise in UK TV drama that the story is the most important thing?

[Huge]

Sadly that appears to be a rather old-fashioned point of view. Who cares about plot, characterisation and so forth as long as there's kewl CGI and big explosions...

[tony sayer]

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

You'll have the post that over on the TV and Broadcast ng's Dave!...

[Pete Zahut]

Personally I think the death knell for the show was about a year ago IIRC. A lot of changes to the cast were made all at once and the 'artistic' director - probably some 'meeja studies - wet behind the ears graduate straight from uni - decided it was a good idea to go to that horrible 'filmic' (is that what it's called?) way of filming that makes brights too bright and darks too dark. Oh, and the camera work as well. The shaky camera work was always part of the Bill but recently I got to feeling quite seasick sometimes as it had got so shaky.

I think the show could have gone on and on but, as usual, "they" just cannot leave anything alone. They had a winner but just had to mess about changing things.

[stuart noble]

We only do costume drama these days. Another Jane Austen, another cleavage. Yawn, yawn. I wonder what Dave thinks of AMC's "Breaking Bad" series. Camera work is just stunning, which I guess simply means they throw more money at it, but the writing is clever too. In short, innovative (a word that doesn't figure in the UK film maker's vocabulary).