Talking Telly: Farewell to ‘The Bill’

“The Bill” is one of those British evening institution shows, kind of like “Law & Order” has been in the US. It’s Britain’s longest-running police procedural television series, beginning in 1983. And like L&O, it’s on its way out the door. Tonight is its final show.

It’s kind of interesting, because much like British soap operas, the main charm of “The Bill” seems to have been in its history and tradition, not because it’s particularly riveting television. In fact, the show was frequently a subject of many comedy skits and jokes on panel shows.

When the news broke about its cancellation in March, comments began pouring in on the Radio Times story about it and haven’t stopped. The last episode was the main topic of discussion on this morning’s Radio 1 morning show, mostly because one of the sidekicks is known to be a weekly watcher of the show and is going through all the stages of grief. And talk about it has been all over Twitter.

Personally, I never got into it partly because I’ve never really been into police dramas. But if you do watch the finale or want to get a good taste of what it was about, make sure to check out this excellent column in The Guardian that details all of the details Brits could always count on when they watched the show. Frankly, it’s almost a list of the tropes present in all crime dramas, but these have a distinctly Anglophile twist.