A Masterpiece!

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

I'm a fan of BritCrime shows, and have been ever since I first saw "Softly Softly Task Force". I have seen a lot of British crime drama shows since, but there are some that have become all-time favourites. There's "Softly Softly Task Force" (former "Z Cars"), there's "Taggart", and now I discovered "The Bill". It's a well written, well-performed procedural police drama that shows realistic police work, and its quality is much higher than any American or German police crime drama show I know. Although there's a lot of dialogue and not too much action, the dialogue is highly dramatic and very well written. This show has become one of my favourite police drama shows and I hope to see a DVD release of every series produced. I'm hooked and I can't help but keep watching. "The Bill" won't reach my favourite police drama, "Softly Softly Task Force", but it comes close. I think it's a real cult classic and it's a pity they cancelled the show. I highly recommend it to any TV nostalgic and fan of high quality BritCrime TV.

The Bill was essentially a cultural fountain from which a beautiful rainbow-haze of socio-introspection emerged, inspiring such famed derivatives as Cop Land, The Departed, The Godfather 3, and most recently of course, The Wire.With multi-faceted characters and story lines that have been described as '4-dimensional Shakespeare', The Bill grabbed you by the collars from episode one and just would not let you go.The show covered, anticipated, and even occasionally caused all the major global events between 1984 and 2010. The most famously prescient moment being episode 19 of series 5, which aired on the eve of the second Gulf War. Detective Jim Carver's misguided - and ultimately career ending - drugs raid on Craig 'Fun Boy' Richardson's flat in the Jasmine Allen Estate in early 2003, was widely viewed as a predictive allegory for the coalition's failure to find weapons of mass destruction following the invasion of Iraq several months later.However, it was the work the Bill did to try and highlight some of the lesser-known problems experienced by police officers that won it the most praise. This was sympathetic drama covering such sensitive areas as helmet-phobia, under-uniform cross-dressing, in-van homosexuality, lost truncheons, casual drunken bestiality (regretted), siren aversion syndrome (SAS), groin chaffing caused by chasing suspects while wearing an overly starched uniform and many, many more issues that still trouble, disturb, haunt and excite officers to this day.The last word should go to one of The Bill's most famous fans, Nelson Mandela: "…it is no exaggeration to say that I would not have made it through the dark void of loneliness that summed up my last years of incarceration on Robben Island if it wasn't for the heart-warming, casual buffoonery of Reg Hollis."

I used to always love the bill because of its great script and characters, but lately i feel as though it has turned into an emotional type of soap. If you look at promotional pictures/posters of the bill now you will see either two of the officers hugging/kissing or something to do with friendships whereas promotional pictures of the bill a long time ago would have shown something to do with crime. This proves that it has changed a lot from being an absolutely amazing Police drama to an average type of television soap. When i watch it i feel like I'm watching a police version of Coronation Street or something similar. I have to say i still like the bill as I'm interested in Police work and that type of thing but i really miss the greatness that The Bill used to have. I want to rate it as 2 out of ten because you have to admit it has been totally ruined by the people who took the bill over.As for the script and characters they have both gone downhill, most of the great characters are gone now (although a few still remain i think) and I'm not saying that the newer characters are poor or anything because they definitely aren't, its just that they lack the tough looks, personalities and script lines that all of the old characters used to have because most of the new ones are at the moment involved with silly relationships and family trouble.Overall being one of the only Police programs on television these days, The Bill will always be a crappily interesting thing to watch, but like i say it has lost a lot of its uniqueness (if thats the right spelling) and would now be classed as a terrible, unreal television soap.Recommended to watch for a good laugh over the stupidity of the police officers involved - 2/10

I wrote a review a couple of years ago regretting the direction the programme had taken. I note that several other readers have also commented on The Bill's headlong descent into pantomime soap-opera. I cannot believe that many of the show's long-time fans (which included the eminent historian Andrew Roberts) now bother to watch. Very occasionally I steel myself to tune in for part of an episode but end up watching through my fingers. My most recent visits coincided with the police station being blown up for the second time in five years, the exposure of yet another psychopathic deranged serial-killer police officer, Superintentent Okaro's entire family being wiped out and the poor man going doolally and a regular character being held hostage for the umpteenth time. Not to mention yet another series regular being involved in a relationship with a criminal and struggling with divided loyalties. Enough already! Let Sun Hill join Dock Green and Newtown in that great police beat in the sky.