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Woodentop (The Bill)
Encyclopedia
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
series of one-off plays Storyboard. The programme was originally broadcast on 16 August 1983. It is also the forerunner to the long-running British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
television series The Bill
The Bill
The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...
. The name woodentop is a colloquiallism for beat policemen in the UK, who traditionally wear helmets
Custodian helmet
Custodian helmet or centurion helmet, technically known as a 'Home Office pattern helmet', is a helmet worn by many policemen in England and Wales.-History:...
; the nickname is itself an allusion to the Children's TV series The Woodentops
The Woodentops (TV series)
The Woodentops was a children's television series first shown on BBC Television in 1955. It was created by Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird and featured on the Friday edition of Watch with Mother...
.
Plot
The day is an eventful one; the pair's first assignment together leads them to discovering a decomposing woman's body in her bath. Later whilst on patrol Jim encounters a rude youngster (Gary Hailes
Gary Hailes
Gary Hailes is an English actor.During the 1980s he starred in several successful television series, including Woodentop, Grange Hill and the BBC soap opera EastEnders, where he played Barry Clark from 1986 - 1989...
) and influenced by comments made by older officers at the station decides to clip him round the ear. This action results in him receiving a reprimand at the station from Sergeant Wilding. Fortunately for Carver, the boy's father approves of his son's treatment, and thus no further action is taken.
June Ackland and Dave Litten have been in an on-again off-again relationship, and whenever they cross paths both tend to go silent making other members of their relief uncomfortable. Sergeant Wilding advises Ackland to drop Litten, saying that she can do better.
PC Reg Hollis is also mentioned in this episode. Whilst not appearing on screen, an attempt is made to contact him by radio. When he fails to answer the call, the officers in the station make the assumption that he has wandered out of radio range.
Production
Thames TelevisionThames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
transmitted Woodentop as part of its Storyboard anthology series of one-off dramas . It was written by Geoff McQueen, a writer who had genre experience after writing episodes of LWT's The Gentle Touch
The Gentle Touch
The Gentle Touch is a British police drama television series made by London Weekend Television for ITV which ran from 1980-1984. Commencing transmission on 11 April 1980, the series is notable for being the first British series to feature a female police detective as its leading character, ahead of...
.
Woodentop stood out from run of the mill police dramas of the time for a number of reasons including the use of hand-held camera
Hand-held camera
Hand-held camera or hand-held shooting is a filmmaking and video production technique in which a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or other base. Hand-held cameras are used because they are conveniently sized for travel and because they allow...
s and natural lighting as well as the use of naturally sounding dialogue. The show created a realistic portrayal of modern-day policing, and there was nothing like it on television at the time, a fact which was actively exploited by the programme's makers.
Inconsistencies with The Bill
"Woodentop" has an unusual place in the history of The Bill due to the original premise of this being a one-off play. After broadcast, Thames commissioned a further twelve episodes to be shown the following year (although only eleven were produced due to industrial action) under the name The Bill as the show had the potential to appeal to a mass audience.Although The Bill is clearly a continuation from this episode, the main series contradicts it in a number of ways. For instance, in Woodentop Litten has completed his secondment to CID and is close to securing his place in the detective branch, whereas in The Bill he does not gain his CID secondment until halfway through Series One. In addition many central characters in "Woodentop" - such as Sergeant Wilding and Inspector Deeping - vanish between the pilot and the series. Deeping does gain one mention in Series One, in the episode "It's Not Such a Bad Job After All", where Ackland is informed that he is coming to meet her on the scene of a suicide - a later radio transmission, however, reports that Sgt. Cryer is to meet her instead. Although Wilding is not mentioned following Woodentop, he shares a first name (Bob) and several characteristics with Sgt. Cryer - including a position as the "father figure" of the Sun Hill relief, and an apparently tumultuous relationship with Roy Galloway, whom both Cryer and Wilding refer to as a "bloody superstar". In the first episode of Series One, "Funny Ol' Business - Cops and Robbers", Galloway and Cryer make apparent reference to the events of Woodentop in regards to Jim Carver. Galloway suggests that it is Cryer who requested the favour, further suggesting that Cryer and Wilding are in fact the one character, and that, like PC Taffy Morgan (later Taffy Edwards), Bob has merely received a change of surname.
There are also discrepancies with the naming of some of the characters. In the 2003 live episode of The Bill (made to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of broadcast) Carver and Ackland discuss events from the pilot, whereupon Carver incorrectly refers to the character of Taffy by the surname Morgan, a name that was dropped for the series proper in favour of "Edwards".
There are also mistakes made in some the uniforms the cast wore during the episode, for example, in one scene, PC Dave Litten is on foot patrol with PC Jim Carver, and PC Litten's helmet has GR on the helmet badge where it should have had ER, the same that was on PC Carver's helmet. Also the tunics the male officers wore had buttoned down epaulettes, whereas they should have just had the insignia placed on the shoulder of the tunic as this is what the Metropolitan Police wore at the time.
Only four of the cast of "Woodentop" would go on to be regulars in the main series of The Bill: Mark Wingett, Trudie Goodwin, Gary Olsen and Colin Blumenau while a number of characters were re-cast including Roy Galloway.
Production Team
- Written by Geoff McQueenGeoff McQueenGeoffrey "Geoff" McQueen was a television screenwriter. A carpenter and joiner by trade he worked abroad for many years before he began writing in 1978. His first success came in 1982 when an episode of The Gentle Touch he'd written was aired.-Career:He is probably best remembered for creating...
- Produced by Michael Chapman
- Directed by Peter CregeenPeter CregeenPeter Cregeen is a British television director, producer and executive. He is possibly best known for being the original director of ITV's successful police drama, The Bill, and his substantial contribution to the serial thereafter...
Cast
- PC. Jim Carver - Mark WingettMark WingettMark Wingett , is an English actor. He is best known for playing the role of Jim Carver in the ITV1 police procedural The Bill.-Career:...
- PC. Dave Litten - Gary OlsenGary OlsenGary Olsen was an English actor.Olsen was born in London and lived with an aunt and uncle, after losing both his parents at an early age. He attended the Archbishop Tenison's Church of England School in Kennington...
- WPC. June Ackland - Trudie GoodwinTrudie GoodwinTrudie Goodwin is an English actress best known for playing Sergeant June Ackland in the high-profile British television police drama The Bill from 1984 to 2007. On September 7th, 2011 it was announced that Goodwin is to join the long-running soap Emmerdale...
- Sergeant Jack Wilding - Peter Dean
- Detective Inspector Roy Galloway - Robert PughRobert PughRobert Pugh is a Welsh film and television actor.Pugh was born in Cilfynydd and graduated from Rose Bruford College in 1976. In 2007, he co-starred alongside Genevieve O'Reilly and Geraldine James in ITV1 drama The Time of Your Life, where he played a parent whose 36-year-old daughter was...
- PC. "Taffy" Morgan - Colin BlumenauColin BlumenauColin Blumenau is a British actor and theatre director.He played Francis "Taffy" Edwards in The Bill from 1984 to 1990....
- Inspector Sam Deeping - Jon Croft
- Reg Taylor - Gary HailesGary HailesGary Hailes is an English actor.During the 1980s he starred in several successful television series, including Woodentop, Grange Hill and the BBC soap opera EastEnders, where he played Barry Clark from 1986 - 1989...
- George Taylor - Colin McCormackColin McCormackColin McCormack was a professional Welsh actor who enjoyed considerable success in classical stage performances and television shows over a career approaching fifty years from his debut as a child actor in a BBC TV's Dixon of Dock Green episode, a show he returned to twenty years later when he...
- Duty Sgt. - Chris Jenkinson
- Duty PC. - Richard Huw
- Winston Summers - Paul McKenzie