You can tell any story you like in The Bill
Paul Marquess, the man behind Footballers’ Wives, has saved the cop series with its new racy plots.
By Maggie Brown
The man
behind The Bill doesn’t like police dramas. Nor does he care for grisly
television murders and mutilated corpses. “I am increasingly depressed by
crime series like Trial & Retribution. I didn’t even watch Messiah.
It is gore porn.” So you might think he’s a mite miscast as the producer of The
Bill, but since taking over the cop drama 18 months ago this slick operator,
son of a Belfast rent collector, has cemented its future.The Bill is celebrating 20 years on air this autumn, and could well survive another decade. But there’s a price. Paul Marquess has applied years of experience at Coronation Street and Brookside in the well-established drama machine, based in grim factory-style conditions in Merton, south London. And he has come to appreciate the mine of London crime around him which he can exploit as he commutes on the Northern line from his luxury Clapham pad.
Since he has taken over; audiences have shot up, drawn by the ruthlessly racy storylines he’s masterminded.
Marquess, 38, says: “ I believe you can tell any story you like in The Bill” – even though it runs at 8pm.
“The first thing I did was to take out the bad language. The Independent Television Commission’s
“I had stopped watching The Bill, it was loved by people aged 50 and upwards. I didn’t feel as a storytelling machine it was connecting. One episode as I arrived was about art forgery - it wasn’t terrible, but it had no relevance to the ITV audience. So we have done a lot of storylines about kids. That’s people’s number-one preoccupation. I also thought if you were Black or Asian where were you?”
“When I got here, the Met was in a post-Lawrence universe, policing London for its entire population, not just for the white property owning classes. The Bill had not got to grips with that. My cast is now a Metropolitan dream, full of women and minorities. It needed to change fast, it needed emergency surgery.”
Audiences,
which dropped to a danger point of five million, at which point the axe is
usually swung, are now up by two million and sometimes pass nine. The number of
16-34 watching has doubled.Marquess first decreed that Sun Hill Station was blown up. Only eight of the 28 characters will survive when the makeover is finalised. Then there’s been a gay kiss and simmering tension between two police officers. And a lesbian storyline which actress Jane Danson (PC Gemma Osbourne) is currently finding so uncomfortable she’s quitting. (Marquess disputes this: ”First I’ve heard. There’s only been one kiss and a tasteful bedroom scene. I never persuade actors to stay - never works - they’re miserable.”)
“I do like actors, I can walk out of here and go to Sainsbury’s, no one knows who I am. They can’t. I wouldn’t do it for a million pounds. This is hard work, long, long hours. We are ambitious. If you’re in a big story, you are knackered.”
He says the gay kiss “worked a treat. As a gay man I never expected it to be so successful.” He insisted on them being in uniform in the police station. He giggles. “It was a very arresting image.”
Tonight’s Bill is the fourth of an emotional six-parter about the hunt for the eight-year old daughter of Sun Hill officer, DC Eva Sharpe (Diane Parish) who disappeared during a station open day. Evidence has also emerged of a of a highly placed paedophile ring stretching into the force.
Marquess says: “The original thought was that the child dies. We were well into story-lining this when Soham happened, I watched acres of Sky News. Then Milly Dowler happened.”
“Hand on heart, we thought of it before, but it did affect the way we told the story - in two ways. We are much more aware of paedophilia than before. So we say in this story you should be very careful of hysteria. And we changed the ending. It was too bleak. I’ve had sleepless nights about it.”
Marquess
from today, reaps another prize: promotion to head of drama for Thames
television charged with drumming up new series by using the talent base of The
Bill. “ Most drams in this country is really lazy. I mean, they need more
work on the story.” He already has a first series, Think Murder, a Bill
spin-off, on the go.Marquess relishes his success, because it took time to arrive. After a drama degree at Manchester University he worked in lighting shops in London until the age of 29. Then his university friend, Tony Wood, now drama series commissioner at the ITV network centre, talked him into a script job at Granada.
“I’d sold David Liddiment
job?’”
There’s another reason for Thames confidence in Marquess. Five years ago, he devised the sensational Footballers’ Wives, now in its second series.
“I watched this documentary called Cheshire Wives. Brilliant. It was about rich women in Cheshire. Then I saw Posh on telly and just hit on it. It has nothing to do with football, it’s an excuse. Its trash.”
“When I came up with it. I thought it was brilliant. It goes to the heart of what depresses me about the whole Hello!/OK! Thing. I was sending it up. I thought it was a very attractive conceit, but it is also quite critical."
He is paid a percentage from it by producers, Shed Productions which is run by friends of his.
But there are limits for The Bill - he doesn’t think it can tackle terrorism. “It’s dishonest doing terrorist plots in The Bill. We don’t want to send kids to bed with nightmares.”