The Bill - Further Textual Analysis

The Bill out of my chosen texts is the most contemporary and compared to Dixon of Dock Green follows a much more gritty, modern realistic tone with modern society issues such as in the image with that seems to be a young person about to jump off the edge of a building. The officers in the still can clearly be seen doing their job with the second officer holding back a group of people to maintain calm and safety over the issue, the first officer trying to convince the person about what they are considering doing will not have a good outcome.
Even though the officers are doing their job what is presented through this situation is that modern times bring much more difficult challenges for them to deal with psychologically and physically which have an impact on what the force do and what they themselves suffer in the line of duty. A situation of this level of trauma would never appear in an episode of Dixon of Dock Green which presented the much more peaceful, simple 'golden age' for the police.

Due to the inability to deal with many of these traumatic situations in the modern age the force also receives much more criticism from the public over why they failed to save loved ones etc. Examples of this kind of issue can be the recent April Jones dissaperence in Wales in which the police force has come under scrutiny for having not acted on the issue well enough and local searches proving more effective until the police sorted themselves out and got involved. Also with an issue like this, it would be hard to predict something like this happening so the media can very regular share far too much blame of the police force, they are still normal working people with a high demand job.

Similar to one of the screenshots previously looked at from Dixon of Dock Green this shows a more social aspect of the officers. The Dixon image presented a more informal, laid back form of meeting that may have still centred around their work due to still being in uniform just like The Bill image to the left. The background to the image is a canteen that resides within a police station these officers can be seen in a more formal lunch place having what looks to be more like a discussion over a particular issue with the authoritativeness of the finger pointing towards the table. This can also present the idea that officers can find it extremely hard to separate their social and working lives. A similarity to the Dixon meeting image is the presence of a female police offircer, what can be known is that throughout the twentieth century, women in the workplace was a huge issue and feminism came about in strong tides forcing equality and equal rights in every situation including male dominated jobs such as the police. This seems to be a situation that would have much backfire if used awkwardly in a programme such as The Bill therefore, just like Dixon of Dock Green it is a more serious issue that is kept under wraps. Some TV Dramas based themselves on this issue of women in a male dominated police force such as Gentle Touch and Juliet Bravo.