The Bill Goes 'Live'

This is the Thames Press Release about the special episode being broadcast live on Thursday 30th October at 8.00


TWENTY YEARS ON AIR, BUT ONLY ONE LIVE EPISODE as the nation's favourite police officers experience life on the very edge…

In an action packed hour of live dramatic scenes, stunts and high tension, viewers will witness the tragic murder of a Sun Hill regular and a missing person's investigation unfolds, while a familiar face reappears but this time on enemy sidelines and another surprise figure lurks in the shadows

PC Cathy Bradford opens the LIVE episode as she attempts to talk down a vicious drunk holding a knife to the throat of terrified DC Juliet Becker.

PC Gary Best's father is missing. An empty bullet ridden van awash with blood is the only clue to his possible whereabouts. When the family leads run cold there's a tip off that he may have been found. But the gruesome findings ignite an explosive reaction in Gary intent on revenge on the man he believes is responsible for his father's murder - Jules Ellis.

Viewers will also see the show's original surviving characters DC Jim Carver and Sergeant June Ackland, played by Mark Wingett and Trudie Goodwin, share some poignant moments as they find themselves reminiscing about the past 20 years. Is it too late for them to rekindle their passion for one another?

And Sergeant Sheelagh Murphy, stunned by the events unfolding around her, attempts to come to terms with losing Des and makes a life-changing decision.

Sounds interesting. I'll try and watch (though I'll be on holiday, so I might miss it) if only to see any line fluffs.

Surely they'll have people on set with cue cards in case somebody forgets? How is this going to work anyway - usually, they do each scene a few times, removing a wall off the set to do shots from one angle, then replacing the wall and removing another to get shots from another angle... so I expect there won't be any ambitious shots in this episode?

Yes, it will be difficult and probably limited in what they can do. However, it can work, remember the live Corrie episode. It looked slightly different on screen, but it worked well as I recall. The Bill will probably be more difficult though if they are including stunts etc.

In the days when TV drama was broadcast live they had prompts available with scripts. The prompts had a button that let them cut the mics for the duration of their prompting - if there were a lot of prompts required they even put up apology captions for the loss of sound.

Be interesting to see how it works these days - I don't think cutting sound would be an option. However showing the whole thing through a short delay might allow for some latitude - though this wouldn't be easy to work. I suspect they may retain the odd pre-recorded insert as well (which was often the case for exteriors in live drama in the 50s and 60s)

As for the shooting style - I wouldn't be surprised if we saw longer shots, possibly with a steadicam to allow lots of on-shot moves in a confined space, rather than trying to shoot every scene with 3 or 4 cameras. ISTR that is what they did with ER when it was live (though they also cheated by writing in a "documentary" storyline which justified the different shooting style?)