After 16 years on air, The Bill's audience arrest rate is higher than it's ever been and shows absolutely no sign of softening its grip. SUE WILLIAMS visits the set to find out why.

IN A DINGY hospital ward, a weeping woman with both arms in plaster and two blackened eyes is lying back on her pillows, fretting about her lost son. Suddenly, PC Polly Page arrives at her bedside, pushing a little boy before her.
"We've found him!" she cries, gasping for breath. "Here he is!"
The boy rushes towards the woman, leaps on her bed and launches himself towards her for a hug.
Page, aka actor Lisa Geoghan, dissolves into giggles, the director yells, "Cut!" and the camera stops rolling.
"She's supposed to have two broken arms," Geoghan tells the boy, laughing. "I think jumping on her like that would have finished her off for good."
Yet it's completely understandable that a six-year-old boy could have taken his role in the top rating British police drama The Bill to heart. For there are plenty of people, far older and wiser than he, who find it similarly difficult to distinguish reality from fantasy.
There are the passing members of the general public, for instance, who regularly rush into the studios housed in a massive converted wine warehouse in London's south to report a bashing or a missing dog, in the belief that Sun Hill police station is a fully functioning outpost of the Met. Then there are those darting up to the mock police cars during filming to report other drivers for minor traffic offences.
There are even the real police who often invite cast members to award-giving ceremonies, in the surreal belief that their presence will add even more authenticity to the occasion.
"For a lot of people, it does feel very real," said Geoghan, 34, one of the most popular actors in the show for the past eight years. "For us, of course, it's just a great job, but people ask me all the time if I've ever seriously thought about joining the police.
Naturally, it's a huge compliment to such a long-running drama, now in its 16th year, that it still manages to engage so thoroughly an audience of millions around the world. In the UK in the past year, its ratings have leapt since the ailing half-hour show was extended to an hour, and in Australia, where it screens on the ABC, it's now reporting some of its best viewing figures ever.
A major reason for that enduring success is the accuracy of the world that unfolds inside the largest production house in the world.
On bulletin boards all around the set, for instance, are posted real police newsletters and "wanted" posters. In the studio courtroom, there's a newspaper carefully concealed under one of the lawyers' benches for those dull moments during any trial. In the cells, there are even brown stains carefully painted around the insides of the toilet bowls.
"The storylines have really improved too, since we went to an hour," said Geoghan.
"They're a lot more in-depth, and it means the writers can have better ideas. It was always hard having one story that started and finished inside 24 minutes. Now there's so much more room to expand everything."
Certainly, since the storm of controversy 15 months ago over The Bill episodes lasting an hour and delving into the private lives of their coppers for the first time, audiences and cast alike have been injected with a fresh enthusiasm over the show.
Simon Rouse, for example, who's been playing the surly DCI Jack Meadows for nine years now, has no intention of leaving. "It used to get a bit same-y, with all the best storylines played out by the guest characters," said Rouse, 48. "But with that hour, everyone has a lot more space to breathe and you don't feel as pressured.
"In half-an-hour, I often ended up just strutting around with my chest out, shouting. Now I have more room to put my character forward rather than just being the heavy manager, without the humanity."
Even for the newer members of the cast, that change in style has reaped huge rewards. When George Rossi joined as the slow-talking Scottish DC Duncan Lennox, he wasn't sure how long he'd last. Now he's happy to stay for as long as he's wanted.
With more time devoted to internal drama, rather than those pet-hate action sequences where he chases crims for four pages, he's in heaven.
"That hour just means we can be more sympathetic and more real," said Rossi, an Italian-Scot who left the family's ice-cream business to try and make it as an actor in London and ended up with his first part as an ice-cream seller in Glasgow.
"Before, there was a lot of shouting at everyone to show audiences you were a copper. Now you can see the real person inside the uniform which makes it a much better challenge for an actor, you have to be angry all the time. You can actually be a nice guy."
That brings other benefits, too, some of which weren't so immediately obvious.
"The other day I was walking along and there was this wolf pack of 13- and 14-year-olds walking towards me," said Rossi, 38. "I got ready for trouble, as often they can get quite aggressive. But then they saw who I was, and said 'Hey! We like you! You're a nice guy!' I could breathe again. It's a wonderful show. I love it!"
The Bill, Tuesdays and Saturdays, at 8.30pm on the ABC and weekdays at 8pm on UK-TV.

© Fairfax Newspapers 2000

(Article from the Sun-Herald TV Liftout for the week of September 17-23 2000)
 
 

© The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd 1999

(Article from Sunday Herald Sun: TV Extra magazine - 14th November, 1999)
 
 

Dec 09 2000
Lisa Geoghan - The Bill's WPC Polly Page - talks about love, onscreen and off.
By Sally Morgan, The Mirror

For the last eight years, Lisa Geoghan has played The Bill's loyal and caring WPC Polly Page. But now she is set to shock both colleagues and viewers as she turns into a femme fatale by beginning a torrid affair with PC Dave Quinnan.
Ever since she declared her love to him on the eve of his wedding to nurse Jenny Delaney last year, the passion between them has been bubbling beneath the surface. Now it finally erupts in a steamy plot that will leave viewers spellbound and Quinnan, played by Andrew Paul, in deep marital trouble.
"The sex scenes will be juicy by The Bill's standards," says Lisa, 34, gleefully. "I relish having a meatier part to play, and this will really provoke a dramatic reaction.
"We're not talking naughty bits, though, just a few scenes in bed and in the shower. I'd feel uncomfortable about appearing totally naked. I've known the crew for years, they're my mates, and I reckon it would be easier to do explicit scenes when you don't know anyone.
"As it was, the crew were cheering, 'Whey-hey-hey!' during a clinch, so I dread to think how they would have responded if we'd gone further."
This is by no means Lisa's first screen kiss. That was with Todd Carty, who now plays Mark Fowler in EastEnders, when, at the age of 16, she was cast as his girlfriend in Tucker's Luck.
"I felt like the lucky one," she recalls. "Everyone fancied Tucker but now I can't even remember what kissing Todd was like, just that he seemed very grown up and nothing like the real Tucker."
That kiss was just a kiss, but this is the first time Lisa has played a mistress. "It's fantastic for Polly because Quinnan is what she has always wanted," says Lisa. "He wants it, too. Three years ago, when she had a boyfriend, he was a bit jealous but it was only when he married Jenny that Polly realised she loved him.
"I think it's terrible when women have affairs with married men," she continues. "I'm happily married and the idea of a woman doing that behind my back is awful, unforgivable.

Postman's knock
Lisa, who has been married for four years, first met her husband, postman Michael Power, when they both attended the same primary school in South East London. "He was in the year above me and our mums used to chat at the school gates," remembers Lisa. She was 20 and an established actress when they next bumped into each other at their local pub.
"The moment he walked in, I thought, 'Wow, he's lovely'. He's tall and dark with blue eyes, just the type I go for. We had a drink together, caught up on our news, and then he asked to see me at the pub again the following week.
"It was all very casual. If anyone had told me I'd spend the rest of my life with him, I wouldn't have believed them, and he would have been more shocked than me. We were still young, and just having a good time."
Their relationship became more serious and they bought a small flat near their families in Peckham, South London. The couple had been together for six years when tragedy struck. At the age of 61, Lisa's father, Chris, an engineer, died suddenly of a heart attack.
In an awful coincidence, on what should have been her first day working on The Bill, Lisa took compassionate leave to attend his funeral.
"I found it hard to talk about dad's death," remembers Lisa. "For six months afterwards, people who didn't know he'd passed away, would ask me how he was and I'd reply, 'Fine'. I couldn't bring myself to use the word 'dead'.
"It made me think about mortality, and somehow this gradually filtered down to my relationship with Mike and how I saw my future. We'd never even discussed marriage before because we were happy as we were, but one day, it suddenly felt important. We'd been together ten years and still referring to him simply as 'my boyfriend' seemed inadequate."
When Lisa told her mother Nora, now 65, that they intended to get married, there were tears of joy. "She started crying and saying, 'Oh, daddy loved Michael'," Lisa recalls. "My dad and Michael had a great relationship, but I didn't want tears or emotional scenes from morning till night on our wedding day. It was supposed to be a celebration.
"We didn't want a big church wedding, either, so Michael and I decided to fly off to Las Vegas. Mum was fantastic when I told her. My brother Stephen had had the full works at his wedding three years earlier, which had been hard work to organise, so I think Mum was secretly relieved."
Viva Las Vegas
After spending a week in Hollywood, Lisa and Michael, now 37, were married on May 31, 1996, at the Little Chapel of Flowers in Vegas.
"The guy who drove our limo was also the witness and the photographer," says Lisa. "I'd imagined that a Vegas wedding would be a conveyor belt job, but I was wrong. When we got there, this minister chatted to us for ages about the meaning of marriage. He was going on and on, and when I eventually got a word in and told him we'd been together ten years, he started the ceremony.
"Just before we entered the chapel, he made a comment that made me shiver. He said, 'Those people who are dead are here with you now'. I couldn't believe it - we'd come all this way to get away from that. I looked at Michael and he looked at me, and my eyes filled with tears. But as I walked down the aisle, I felt comforted because, in a way, I felt that dad was very close to me."
Back home in London, Lisa admits that Michael did change after the wedding. "He became more protective," she says. "Suddenly I had to carry my mobile phone everywhere and lock the car doors when I was driving. He also worried about me getting hurt in fight scenes in The Bill. He's probably more concerned about them than my steamy scenes with Quinnan.
"After four years of marriage, we're still very happy. And our jobs aren't as worlds apart as some people might think. We both wear uniforms and have to work in all weathers. Michael fits in very well when we go out with some of the cast. He takes it all in his stride. Of course we go to fantastic venues sometimes, but my ideal night would be at home with Michael with a film and a take-away."
Lisa's new, steamy on-screen role with adulterous Quinnan may be a long way from the domestic bliss she shares with Mike, but she can't help but compare what's happening in The Bill with real life.
"Polly Page has always been perceived as a nice girl," she says. "And her colleague Tony Stamp certainly has a soft spot for her. But when she inadvertently leads him on and he finds out she doesn't really want him, he's broken-hearted.
"I think people will be more upset about me hurting him than about the affair. Polly thinks she's doing the right thing, but if it was me, I'm certain I'd never upset so many people."

The Bill, Tuesday and Friday, ITV, 8pm.