Andrew post_id=7178 time=1618609201 user_id=791 Wrote:That story is far too uncertain for me even for the tabloids
It’s a far distance from “The Bill is coming back” at this stage
It's more likely that someone has written a potential revival but it's not actually been commissioned or had any interest.
mdta post_id=7176 time=1618608917 user_id=1187 Wrote:Probably too much to hope it will return to the earlier format of being grounded, and the everyday law enforcement activities.
We don't really need more overly dramatic, terrorism, and massive investigations as the storyline. (at least I think thats covered by other police shows)
Law and Order UK was probably the closest we got, but that was a single case per episode, and ideally we would have a mix of longer running investigations, routine incidents, and re-occurring "pastoral" interactions.
The whole grounded, on the beat, no music, shot on videotape etc. was the entire intention of The Bill when it started. It could have been action packed, background music and shot on film if they wanted (I did read something about how they had to fight to have it on video, as single-camera video shooting on location wasn't the easiest thing in the mid-80s), but they clearly wanted that simplicity and that look. It's really how the show should be if they bring it back, but it won't be. They'll be scared of it looking "slow", "cheap", "old fashioned" and whatever. How are we meant to know something's meant to be dramatic or sad or characters are in peril if there isn't background music to tell us? Or if there is but you can still hear the dialogue over it.
I guess we should be glad The Bill made it all the way to 2009 without those embellishments.
James2001 post_id=7181 time=1618609415 user_id=956 Wrote:The whole grounded, on the beat, no music, shot on videotape etc. was the entire intention of The Bill when it started. It could have been action packed, background music and shot on film if they wanted (I did read something about how they had to fight to have it on video, as single-camera video shooting on location wasn't the easiest thing in the mid-80s), but they clearly wanted that simplicity and that look. It's really how the show should be if they bring it back, but I do doubt it somehow, even though I think that style was one of the reasons for the show's success.
Wouldn't shooting it on videotape make it look cheap? Apart from the three main soaps, no drama these days have that look anymore and if you want to sell it abroad, a filmic look is essential.
XIII post_id=7185 time=1618609662 user_id=894 Wrote:Wouldn't shooting it on videotape make it look cheap? Apart from the three main soaps, no drama these days have that look anymore and if you want to sell it abroad, a filmic look is essential.
Why does everyone think it looks cheap? The Bill had no problem being sold abroad into the 00s without one. Just because no other drama does it doesn't mean it's "wrong" or can't be made to look good, especially using modern techniques, this isn't brightly lit multi-camera on EMI2001s any more. The main soaps, Emmerdale in particular who seem to experiment more than any of the others, often show how effective you can make videotaped drama look with various techniques when they have special episodes- look at the flashback openings in Emmerdale a couple of weeks back for example. People just deride it as "cheap" without even giving it a chance- look at The Hobbit, which everyone had already decided looked like an episode of Upstairs Downstairs or 70s Doctor Who (or, even worse, the "motionflow" effect on TVs, which is always terrible) before they'd seen any of it (to the point loads of people were even complaining about how bad the HFR looked in the trailers, even though they were released in 24fps, there were a few videos which badly converted the trailers from 24p to 60p to try and give people an idea what the 48p footage looked like which didn't help matters as well though) and clearly weren't going to change their minds, which killed any chance of any more HFR films for the forseeable.
After all, we're constantly upping the resolution of TV and movies to make it look more realistic, why is having a frame rate that makes the footage look smoother and more realistic seen as such a bad thing these days? Especially with the amount of motion blur you need to have to stop 24/25/30p footage looking too jerky, which becomes more and more apparently the higher the resolution and the bigger the screen. Some content these days has ridiculous amounts of motion blur which almost negates the higher definition, especially when there's lots of movement.
But we are in an era where even the Antiques Roadshow and Garderner's World have to be filmic, so sadly it probably is too much to expect a Bill revival to not be.
Does seem interesting though that an increasing number of internet content creators use 50/60fps even as the TV and movie industries reject it- maybe it will start to become a trendy way to make TV shows look in the future as a result as the people who watch online content get accustomed to it?
I enjoy the old tape look, but I can’t see why a main broadcaster/production would use it today. Film perhaps if you wanted a different look. But they won’t want to “waste” money like that.
AllWillBeWell post_id=7190 time=1618610921 user_id=773 Wrote:I enjoy the old tape look, but I can’t see why a main broadcaster/production would use it today. Film perhaps if you wanted a different look. But they won’t want to “waste” money like that.
The advancement in camera technology means that even a drama shot on a daytime budget like Father Brown or The Mallorca Files can look decent.
It probably should never have ended in the first place - it wasn't cutting it to once a week or moving it to 9pm which was the problem, but making the show completely unrecogniseable. Didn't it even change the theme tune?
This story doesn't quite add up though, especially bringing it back under the name Sun Hill rather than The Bill. It sounds like another example of somebody wanting to bring it back, but not having the rights to do so or a channel/service wanting it too. If a genuine revival was on the cards I'd imagine Channel 5 is the most likely home, but I don't really think a weekly serial fits their strategy now considering they are screening dramas across a single week.
AllWillBeWell post_id=7190 time=1618610921 user_id=773 Wrote:I enjoy the old tape look, but I can’t see why a main broadcaster/production would use it today.
Again though, the question is, why not? There's always the answer that it looks "cheap" or "old fashioned", which is a subjective opinion, that "nobody else makes anything that way", which doesn't mean someone can't try something different to the accepted norm, or the claim that viewers will reject it and international broadcasters won't buy it, but then there hasn't been a big drama production made on video for the best part of 30 years (I think the House of Elliot was possibly the last non-CBBC, CITV or continuing drama, in the UK at least, that was?) for anyone to even test that theory. Certainly nothing made with modern technology and techniques, so all we really have to judge on with videotaped non-soap drama is studio-based multi-camera and OBs from the 70s and 80s and CBBC serials from the 90s, which is hardly indicative of how things could look now. Modern filmed dramas don't look like The Sweeney or Brideshead Revisisted, after all, and even the Corrie, Emmerdale and EastEnders of today look very different to those of years gone by.
Unless someone tries to make a big budget drama in 4k at 50fps with modern lighting and colour grading, how do we know how what it will look like and how viewers and international broadcasters will react to it? But we seem stuck in this idea that it will look like Blake's 7, viewers will turn off, no foreign broadcaster will buy it and that's that. Obviously there'll be plenty of people who'll deride it off the bat like happened with The Hobbit, but we'll never know if it's not actually tried.
It would actually be interesting to see what would happen in an alternate universe where high frame rates became the norm and someone tried to make something with a film look, would it be derided as looking like something from the 50s and jerkily unwatchable? It's all perception after all rather than one being "better" or "looking more expensive" than the other, and as videotaped shows tended to have lower budgets and production standards in general than filmed ones it got assosiated with "cheapness", when other aspects of the productions and the era they were made have as much to do with them looking cheap. If people had been used to movies and big budget TV shows being made in high frame rates over the course of several decades, then maybe that "cheap" perception wouldn't exist. The film look and the 24fps standard wasn't created for aesthetic reasons after all, it was borne out of the need to use the least amount film that was possible to give acceptable audio quality with 1920s sound-on-film technology, and therefore use the least film and be cheapest. 24fps literally exists because it was the bare minimum they could get away with, not because it was seen as some sort of aesthetic gold standard, which is how it seems to be treated by some now, it's subjective perception that's been formed over decades.
I know I've dragged this thread horribly off-topic, so I'll stop now.
Brekkie post_id=7198 time=1618612426 user_id=976 Wrote:It probably should never have ended in the first place - it wasn't cutting it to once a week or moving it to 9pm which was the problem, but making the show completely unrecogniseable. Didn't it even change the theme tune?
I did talk to someone on twitter a couple of years back who claimed they worked on the show and the revamp was forced on them against their will by ITV, as they wanted it to look and feel more like their post-watershed dramas than the pre-watershed soaps as a result of the scheduling change.
Of course I have no idea whether that person actually did work for the show or if there was any truth in it, people on the internet can claim to be anyone. It's as likely it was nothing to do with ITV and was just a series of bad decisions by the producers to try and flag up a fading series as it was put into a new timeslot.
And I can't see ITV having mandated the theme tune change even if they did the other changes (not that that person I talked to ever claimed the theme tune change was down to ITV, only the stylistic and casting ones).
James2001 post_id=7181 time=1618609415 user_id=956 Wrote:The whole grounded, on the beat, no music, shot on videotape etc. was the entire intention of The Bill when it started. It could have been action packed, background music and shot on film if they wanted (I did read something about how they had to fight to have it on video, as single-camera video shooting on location wasn't the easiest thing in the mid-80s), but they clearly wanted that simplicity and that look. It's really how the show should be if they bring it back, but it won't be. They'll be scared of it looking "slow", "cheap", "old fashioned" and whatever. How are we meant to know something's meant to be dramatic or sad or characters are in peril if there isn't background music to tell us? Or if there is but you can still hear the dialogue over it.
I guess we should be glad The Bill made it all the way to 2009 without those embellishments.
The Wire went for an unpolished approach, and whilst it wasn't quite as raw with it's narrative storytelling (it still felt like a drama telling a story) it gave the show an authenticity and visceral feel - where the characters felt full of life, and had depth.
If they could capture some of that with their characters and interactions, with the more procedural structure with standing sets, an ensemble cast, and outdoor filming to ground the show in today's London.
Multi-camera would ease filming, especially for outdoor scenes which will be well lit - but likely to still use a single-camera setup for the sets, in a similar vein to Holby City.
Also, I would be strongly against using incidental music, keep it to only diagetic sources.
Oh and in recent years, neighbouring London boroughs have been forced to merge police stations and departments - so you could have some added drama by merging Sun Hill with somewhere else, and the conflicts with the officers having to work as one team.
Steve in Pudsey post_id=7152 time=1618604792 user_id=942 Wrote:The thing with the three original cast members coming back as consultants seems a bit far fetched as a storyline
In fairness this does happen, a lot of officers retire after their 30 (or 35) years and rejoin as civilian support staff or as consultants (especially if they have a skillset that is lacking in newer officers). I know of former sergeants coming back as professional standards investigators, one DC came back as a station administrator and civilian statement taker and victim/witness interviewer - it does happen.
When Tony Stamp retired in the series he was taken on as a driving instructor, this happens fairly frequently - how they move him from teaching people Roadcraft and the skid pan to consulting officers on Borough I don't know but he stayed employed by the MPS, June Ackland was a SOIT, so could come back as a sexual offences investigator/advisor.
It's Jim Carver's character that gets interesting, going to GMP on promotion to DS (despite having lost his detective NIE ticket on tenure in 1999) in 2005, how they've written his retirement and return to London will be interesting but again we have a former Royal Hong Kong Police officer who retired in 2001, moved to Scotland then moved down to London in 2010 to be a civilian recruit trainer.
mdta post_id=7214 time=1618622338 user_id=1187 Wrote:Oh and in recent years, neighbouring London boroughs have been forced to merge police stations and departments - so you could have some added drama by merging Sun Hill with somewhere else, and the conflicts with the officers having to work as one team.
Outside of a change of management structure, they still function as independent boroughs albeit with different shoulder numbers - it wouldn't make much of a difference! I think Sun Hill being closed or its custody being shut would be more realistic, 6 cells in total - hardly economical!
The Bill did touch on the idea in the early 90s when the Met went from distinct divisions to Area Based Policing (and Area taking on its surrounding stations and merging their support functions) - even went so far as moving the Chief Super from Sun Hill to area and having the formidable Derek Conway acting up as super for a year.
Steve in Pudsey post_id=7152 time=1618604792 user_id=942 Wrote:The thing with the three original cast members coming back as consultants seems a bit far fetched as a storyline
They tried that with a storyline in the later years of The Bill, when Bob Cryer was called in to help with an old case.
By the way, if you haven't already, have a listen to the
brilliant The Bill podcast, which features many former stars chatting about their time on the programme. The latest episode features Colin Blumenau, who played Taffy Edwards.
https://soundcloud.com/thebillpodcast/co...enau-part1
XIII post_id=7195 time=1618612162 user_id=894 Wrote:AllWillBeWell post_id=7190 time=1618610921 user_id=773 Wrote:I enjoy the old tape look, but I can’t see why a main broadcaster/production would use it today. Film perhaps if you wanted a different look. But they won’t want to “waste” money like that.
The advancement in camera technology means that even a drama shot on a daytime budget like Father Brown or The Mallorca Files can look decent.
Yes but who will have the facilities to edit on tape? Is it still done?
Watching the UKTV Play episodes, I keep getting suprised at the content, considering these shows went out pre-watershed. I'm not sure you'd be able to get away with much of that stuff in a pre-watershed slot now, in fact I'm suprised you could even in the mid-90s, especially some of the language, you'd have the announcer giving a content warning for some of that even post-watershed now. The show certainly wasn't putting out that sort of content in the 00s, even after it went post-watershed for the last year.
soupie post_id=7165 time=1618607745 user_id=1542 Wrote:I’m sure the basic details in the story are correct but crucially it hasn’t been given the green light. It sounds a bit like the eternal story about Carry on London which gets reported every 2-3 years or so.
Yeah, there was more to the stories about Bergerac coming back a few years ago, but that went nowhere.
Steve in Pudsey post_id=7152 time=1618604792 user_id=942 Wrote:The thing with the three original cast members coming back as consultants seems a bit far fetched as a storyline
Sounds a bit familiar, too...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Tricks
AllWillBeWell post_id=7239 time=1618644203 user_id=773 Wrote:Yes but who will have the facilities to edit on tape? Is it still done?
Tape-
look, i.e. 50fps, not literal tape.