Between 1995 – 2003, I designed over forty episodes of ‘The Bill’. The studios were in South Wimbledon (the site is now occupied by Wimbledon Studios and MarjanTV) and we filmed all across south London. When I started, there were three units filming every week, fifty weeks a year. The Red and Blue units were from the original Thames TV days plus the Green unit, introduced when transmission increased to three episodes a week.
Each episode had a designer, a production buyer and a stage manager with two st/by props on set during filming. In my first few years, an episode was around 30min long and took one week to shoot with two episodes per contract. The designer had two weeks prep and two weeks shoot, the first week was spent recce-ing locations and working out the requirements. In the second week Monday was tech recces, Tuesday prop houses for dressing, Wednesday production meetings with Thursday and Friday finishing off prep. If you were on the Blue unit, an invite to Pat Sandys lunch group was an added treat!
The designer was expected to do everything: script breakdown, action vehicles, graphics, location surveys, tech drawing and liaising with construction, set dressing and standing by camera if required. The stage managers looked after all the hand props and ran everything in the main Sun Hill police station set. It was the closest I came to working in a big corporation and really did feel like a family. Happy days.
Below is a selection of my work for an episode called ‘Lies of Silence’, you can watch the original episode here.
