Revamped for a post-watershed slot, the new incarnation of The Bill made its debut on ITV1 last night.
My colleague Stephen Brook was annoyed yesterday by the change to its famous theme tune.
And in his overnight review of the show, the Times's Tim Teeman is similarly scathing.
What have they done to The Bill? All those lush high-def panning shots of Canary Wharf and City vistas slipping in and out of focus? It's like The Wire set in Peckham. Gone is the great, jazzy theme, criminally replaced by some drippy electro pap.
...The Bill's continued existence is a mystery. Nobody ever says: "Watch The Bill last night?" But so it goes on. We don't get excited about The Bill but we like it to be there.
Alice-Azania Jarvis in the Independent is equally ambivalent about the worth of the show after more than 20 years.
Who watches it? There's so much that's good about it, but then there's even more that's terrible. It's ITV isn't it? So you get the crappy background music, the soap-opera close-ups, the cringy title sequences. The acting, for the most part, is strong. And the storylines aren't any worse than any other shows of its sort. It's just the whiff of cheesiness that hangs about it; the dodgy camera angles and hastily written scripts. Still, on it soldiers. And now here it is, moved to 9pm, newly "gritty", apparently. Which is fine I suppose, if a little odd. I can't think of anything less gritty that The Bill.
She does confess that she might have got hooked by the end.
Did you watch it? Are you mystified by its continued presence on our TV screens? Or does its makeover promise a new sophistication for an old favourite of the ITV schedules?
