The Bill

According to Wikipedia, The Bill was made in 16:9 from 1999 but the repeats on Drama have been in 4:3 up until last week, and these are episodes from 2006.

Does anyone know why 4:3 versions were made and why UKTV have these and not the 16:9 versions, and why the switch is randomly mid-series?

I think I posted about this recently on here, and I found a thread about it on Digital Spy as well. Apparently the same episodes that were being shown 4:3 during the week, were being shown 16:9 on the weekends, so the theory was that it was simple case of human error and they were being flagged as 4:3, rather than being 4:3 copies. When I posted on here, I was told that UKTV have always had 4:3 copies - not 14:9 as they used to have with BBC content - of The Bill, which made me question that theory, not having seen the same episode going out in both ratios myself.

Could it be the other way round? The weekend repeats being flagged as 16:9 in error and therefore shown in stretchyvision? Episodes up to last Monday's (I think) have definitely been 4:3.

I would take things posted on DS forums with a pinch of salt

Looks like UKTV have 4:3 copies up to a point. I know they used to be shown on Gold and possibly other UKTV channels, could it be that they changed to the 16:9 copies when whichever channel was showing them at the time became 16:9? Gold didn't go widescreen until Feb 2008.

UKTV in Australia has the 16:9 tx tapes and their repeats have been in 16:9 since the 1999 series, so they are available