The BEST episodes of The Bill season 17
Every episode of The Bill season 17, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of The Bill season 17!
The Bill follows the officers of Sun Hill, a Metropolitan Police station located in the fictional Borough of Canley in London's East End. Created in 1983 by Geoff McQueen as a one-off drama called "Woodentop", The Bill was spun off as a full series, and ran for over 26 years and 2,425 episodes. Covering both uniformed officers and CID detectives, the series is renowned for its accurate and authentic portrayal of policing in London.
#1 - Return of the Hunter
Season 17 - Episode 25 - Aired 4/6/2001
Sgt. Cryer and PC Hayward attend an incident at a local school where an angry divorcee, Chris Finnessey, is demanding to see his son. When the boy's teacher warns the police of Finnessey's violent reputation and a possible restraining order against him, he grabs a Stanley knife and takes the teacher and Sgt. Cryer hostage. Faced with an armed suspect and two hostages, Supt. Chandler calls in SO19, although the only Trojan unit available is that of the newly-qualified PC Smith and PC Stanley. When Finnessey and his son leave the school building, Chandler gives authorisation to fire. Smith shoots first but to his horror, accidentally hits Cryer. Stanley takes down Finnessey. Cryer survives the shooting, but his career in the police is over.
#2 - Hitting Home
Season 17 - Episode 30 - Aired 4/24/2001
The relief have organised a farewell party for Bob Cryer, but it sounds like he's not too keen to go, so Ch. Insp. Conway pays him a visit. The police inquiry clears PC Smith of charges relating to Cryer's shooting, although his probation period is extended. PC Worrell and PC Clarke attend a reported break-in at the house of a hippy couple, who claim a valuable necklace was stolen, and the intruder turns out to be a plumber who still has the key. PC Klein and PC Hayward are called when a strange young woman accuses her neighbour of torturing her elderly mother. When the old woman disappears, it appears she was taken by her son who is wanted for parole violation in Manchester. Cryer turns up for his leaving do at the Bell & Badger, and is in high spirits, though he is angered by Supt. Chandler's speech. Cryer also announces he has brought along a special guest: Dale Smith - he insists he has no hard feelings against Smithy, and that the others should forgive him as well.
#3 - Appropriate Action
Season 17 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/5/2001
A teenage boy is found badly beaten, and a young girl, Lisa, from the same school is missing. DC Webb shows little interest in the case, so Sgt Cryer investigates the girl's disappearance himself. A local 'photographer', Andrew Morton, is the main suspect, as he has an obsession with Lisa and her friends, and he is arrested when PC Harker spots him acting suspiciously by the canal. When Lisa turns out to have been hiding out at a friend's house the whole time, Cryer must rush to prevent Lisa's father from taking the law into his own hands by killing the innocent Morton.
#4 - Value Judgement
Season 17 - Episode 31 - Aired 4/27/2001
A man matching the description of a local paedophile is seen lurking outside a local school, but when the police visit him, he denies it. Outside the school, PC Reg Hollis sees three men fighting, and one of them bundles a struggling young boy into a car, one of the men in the fight runs but is arrested, and he denies knowing the boy. PC Vicky Hagen pursues in the Area Car, but dents the side when she swerves to avoid a head-on collision. The police investigate the case as an abduction, but the boy's aunt reports that he is safe and well and living with his mother - or as safe as he can be, since his mother is living with local scumbag Shane Weller. The boy Jack's mother tells Sgt. Boyden that the man they have in custody is Murad Gocek, Jack's Turkish father, and that he wants to take the boy back to Turkey with him. When Jack goes missing for real, his aunt tells Boyden that his father is staying in a hostel, and that Weller is on his way there. As the police arrest Weller's thugs, Weller drives his car towards a fleeing Gocek and his son. PC Hagen drives between them, totalling the Area Car which, in addition to her two recent PolAccs, results in the instant loss of her police driver's licence.
#5 - Collateral Damage
Season 17 - Episode 32 - Aired 5/1/2001
DS McAllister is surprised to run into her former lover and informant Jamie Ross in a bar, when he returns to Sun Hill after the man who wanted him dead dies of a heart attack. Ross is in a new line of work: organising adventure holidays - but he still has plenty of inside knowledge, and when he and McAllister resume their relationship, he reveals the man responsible for a hit-and-run on a drug dealer and a schoolgirl. To McAllister's horror, she realises that Ross has used her, as he is deeply in debt to Brett Sadler who ordered the drug dealer killed. DI Cullen convinces Ross to help them catch Sadler, but Ross is shot and killed by a sniper.
#6 - A Week of Nights (1)
Season 17 - Episode 33 - Aired 5/4/2001
New Area Car driver, PC Des Taviner, makes an instant (but negative) impression on the relief when he starts work on the night shift at Sun Hill, with his overbearing manner and sharp mouth. He clashes with PC Worrell, and demands she be taken off Area Car duty with him, as he says she is "clueless". Paired with PC Hollis, Taviner chats up two girls waiting for the night bus and offers them a lift home. DC Glaze makes a breakthrough in a series of brutal rapes on the Jasmine Allen estate, and when residents report a woman screaming on Canley Fields, all Sierra Oscar units race to the scene. Taviner is sympathetic towards the victim, prostitute Lynn Roberts, and vows to "get the bastard" responsible.
#7 - A Week of Nights (2)
Season 17 - Episode 34 - Aired 5/8/2001
DS McAllister and DC Glaze are certain they've got their man for the Jasmine Allen rapes - Lenworth Lomanu, a convicted rapist who was seen by Klein and Stamp in the vicinity at the same time as Lynn Roberts was attacked. PC Des Taviner is not so sure, and he suspects that the young man he and PC Worrell questioned outside a pharmacy before it was robbed is responsible. As Taviner and Hollis do their own investigation, Lomanu's arrest causes a near riot on the Jasmine Allen, and Sgt. Gilmore is attacked when he returns two housewives to the estate. Taviner gets his man, Conrad James, but his solicitor brother gets him off the hook. Clear evidence that Conrad is dealing drugs on the estate gives the police the opportunity to raid and search his house, and Conrad admits to the rapes as well.
#8 - Wednesday
Season 17 - Episode 35 - Aired 5/11/2001
PC Klein and PC Taviner arrest two men fighting in the street. DC Danny Glaze is surprised to see one of the men is his old school friend Lol Redman. He is even more surprised when Redman is charged with racial assault after the other man, Devon Russell, says Redman called him a 'black bastard'. Redman is bailed, Glaze gives him lift and arranges to meet him in the pub later. As Glaze waits, Redman is arrested again outside Russell's house. DS McAllister visits Russell's wife whilst he makes a statement at the station, and she admits that she and Redman had an affair and that her husband is a violent and paranoid man, and that Redman was just concerned with her well-being. Back at the station, Russell claims to have a tape of Redman's verbal abuse, but the tape is inconclusive and Redman is released again, although he admits to Danny he did say those things in the heat of the moment. As Glaze gives him a lift home, Redman is set upon by three men, led by Devon Russell's brother, and beaten to death.
#9 - Billy the Kid
Season 17 - Episode 36 - Aired 5/15/2001
A ten-year-old boy who calls himself 'Billy the Kid' is arrested twice in one day, and when Sgt. Boyden speaks to him, he reveals he wanted to speak to the police without being a grass, and that he is concerned about his sister, Kate, an underage prostitute who is being used by her stepfather in a blackmail scam. DI Jane Edmonds from SCG arrives to investigate the scam. She flirts with Boyden - the two clearly have a previous history together - which stirs up the jealousy of Vicky Hagen. When Billy is hit by a car, he is abducted from St Hughs hospital by Kate and their stepfather Tom Adams, who is behind the blackmail and whom Kate is besotted with. Edmonds is all for arresting Adams when they use one of the previous victims in a sting operation, but Boyden risks letting him go so he will lead them to the missing kids.
#10 - Still Crazy
Season 17 - Episode 37 - Aired 5/18/2001
PC Dave Quinnan returns to duty, and is determined to prove to everyone that he's back to normal after his breakdown. Out in a panda car, Quinnan sees a man shot in the head in a van - he calls for assistance, but by the time reinforcements arrive, the victim, the van and the main witness have disappeared. Desperate to prove his sanity, Quinnan pursues the case vigourously, and enlists the help of DC Paul Riley's brother Joe, who asks the wrong people the wrong questions. PC Polly Page is outraged by a practical joke played by PC Taviner, but she and Quinnan get their revenge in a most amusing way.
#11 - Complicity (1)
Season 17 - Episode 38 - Aired 5/25/2001
DS Vik Singh goes undercover to a 'car cruise', where he becomes involved with a well-organised car ringing gang led by Kevin North. Meanwhile, DC Mickey Webb tries to cultivate an unofficial 15-year old snout named Tyro Shaw, in the hope that he will grass up his father, Steve Shaw. Singh poses as a car thief, and is soon in with the gang, even gaining a meeting with North's boss - Jennifer Salter. As Webb gets frustrated by Shaw's dead-end leads, Singh pushes the boy too far about his involvement with the gang.
#12 - Complicity (2)
Season 17 - Episode 39 - Aired 6/1/2001
Tyro Shaw threatens to blow DS Singh's cover in the car-ringing gang, but is convinced otherwise. Singh seems to have impressed both Kevin North and his boss, Jennifer Salter, who seems quite taken with him. Salter tells Singh the gang is moving on soon, and he realises he must get the evidence in North's office. As Singh enters the office, Webb realises that Tyro Shaw has set them up, and Vik is abducted by North and Salter. Webb convinces Tyro to tell them where Vik was taken, and CID narrowly rescue him from being set alight.
#13 - Suffer the Little Children
Season 17 - Episode 40 - Aired 6/8/2001
DI Cullen leads a drugs raid on a warehouse owned by his old nemesis, Terry Barlow, but finds nothing. Cullen is furious with DC Glaze, whose snout tipped them off about drugs on the premises. PC Harker and PC Rickman deal with a domestic case involving an argumentative couple, the Carters, and their baby. Neither case makes any progress until a neighbour reports that Barlow has been to visit the Carters on several occasions. Determined to get one up on CID, Harker puts the pieces together and comes up with a theory that the Carters are putting their baby up for sale on the Guatemalan black market with the help of a doctor at St Hugh's, and Barlow is the broker. Despite warnings from Glaze, Harker presses on and is proven correct when they raid a hotel where the exchange has taken place. Baby Sean is recovered, and the police race to an office building where Jackie Carter is threatening to kill herself.
#14 - Happy and Glorious (1)
Season 17 - Episode 41 - Aired 6/15/2001
The Section House is closing, and Hollis is not only looking for a new place to live, but he is also applying for a transfer to SO14, the Royal Protection unit. He is about to buy a flat owned by an elderly friend, Doreen Tyler, but she changes her mind at the last minute, so he moves in with Stamp temporarily. Hollis's intuition gives CID an important lead on a planned armed robbery, but his uniformed colleagues conspire against him to have Klein organise the Section House closing party instead of him. Upset that his colleagues no longer value his credibility, Hollis decides to skip the party and goes round to visit Doreen, only to find her lying on her living room floor with head injuries.
#15 - Happy and Glorious (2)
Season 17 - Episode 42 - Aired 6/15/2001
With no alibi, Hollis is the prime suspect for Doreen's murder, and he is suspended from duty. While CID try to trace the victim's long lost daughter, with little to no information, Stamp and Klein try to find an alibi for Hollis. They interview a witness outside of Doreen's house, who claims that he saw Hollis hanging around the property more than hour before he stated that he arrived. With the evidence mounting, Stamp and Klein's only hope of clearing Hollis' name lies with a tom, who provides a statement claiming that Hollis was with her at the time of Doreen's death. When a scam involving her 'long-lost daughter' comes to light, Hollis is cleared and CID attempt to track the imposter down.
#16 - Gun Crazy (1)
Season 17 - Episode 43 - Aired 6/19/2001
A mad gunman is on the loose in Sun Hill. Chandler takes a personal interest in the case, but when he confides his reasons to a young woman who was threatened by the gunman, he is horrified to find she was a journalist and the story is published in the Sun Hill Gazette. Feeling unappreciated in the job, Meadows considers other options, and attempts to smooth things over with his long-suffering wife, Laura. Meadows teams up with McAllister and the two of them strike out on their own, and after a few close calls, arrest their prime suspect: a motor mechanic named Alan Merrick, who has a history of firearms offences. As they interview him, however, the gunman strikes again.
#17 - Gun Crazy (2)
Season 17 - Episode 44 - Aired 6/22/2001
Chandler and Cullen are not too pleased after Meadows and McAllister release their prime suspect, Alan Merrick. Meanwhile, Lennox receives a call from the Army, informing them of another possible suspect, a recent deserter named Jason Starr. As Meadows and the team capture Starr following a stake-out on the Larkmead estate, McAllister and reporter Andrea Roper are taken hostage by Merrick and Matty Fletcher after investigating the contents of Merrick's basement. As the situation intensifies, Merrick shoots Fletcher when he tries to leave the building, and is himself shot dead by SO19. Meadows and McAllister are congratulated by Chandler for their handling of the situation.
#18 - The Jury's Out
Season 17 - Episode 45 - Aired 6/26/2001
After a minor car accident in the High Street, Carver breathalyses an elderly man, but takes sympathy on him and allows him to leave in a taxi. The man turns out to be Hugh Alexander, a High Court judge with a renowned pro-police stance, and Carver finds himself suspected of showing bias, particularly when the other man involved in the accident threatens legal action against the Met. At the trial of a man accused of murdering a police officer, Worrell feels marginalised as a black officer when she is asked to testify and be a character witness for the dead officer. Conway meets with Gary Fablon, and discovers that Fablon is addicted to litigation, and the accident was his fault.
#19 - Lick of Paint
Season 17 - Episode 46 - Aired 6/29/2001
A spate of graffiti taggings in Sun Hill sees the police showing zero tolerance to the perpetrators. Carver is sympathetic towards an alcoholic teacher at Canley Art College when his classroom and students' work are defaced. Boyden asks Hagen to move in with him, but she is reluctant, wanting her own space. To her outrage, Boyden moves her belongings to his house as a surprise. Boyden arranges for the council to paint a wall blank to set a trap for the graffitists, catching quite a few in the process. The defacement at the art college turns out to have been committed by the teacher who is jealous that one of his students is sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, life model Moira Sutherland.
#20 - Temptation
Season 17 - Episode 47 - Aired 7/3/2001
Clarke has been working double shifts all week, and goes behind Ackland's back to get some more overtime from Boyden as she is desperately in debt. Taviner promises her some time in the Area Car, much to Hollis's annoyance. Taviner and Clarke interview Warren Debdale, a student who was brutally beaten, but he insists he didn't know the perpetrators. His father suspects the boy's friends are involved, but Glaze discovers the father is being blackmailed by a drug smuggling gang. Assigned to watch Warren in the hospital, Clarke has a coffee with a nurse, and is horrified to find Warren missing when she returns. Clarke's flatmate then threatens to throw her out unless she pays the rent she owes.
#21 - Envy
Season 17 - Episode 48 - Aired 7/6/2001
Glaze is outraged when Clarke falls asleep on an obbo watching the Borrovitch brothers, who are suspected of running a protection racket. Taviner and Clarke then investigate the theft of stolen diggers on a building site. The main suspect is Mick Abbott, an occasional employee at the site, and when they visit him in the bus where he lives, his wife reacts angrily and attacks Clarke. Desperate to clear her debt, Clarke begins moonlighting in telesales at her flatmate's company. While out at a bar with her new co-workers, she spots the Borrovitch brothers, allowing Glaze to make a connection with the stolen diggers and German arms dealers, and a successful raid sees all the culprits behind bars.
#22 - Greed
Season 17 - Episode 49 - Aired 7/10/2001
Clarke fails her probationer exams, and goes AWOL instead of returning to the station. A gang of thieves on rollerblades are rampant in Sun Hill, and their mobility makes it very difficult for the police to catch them. Taviner arrests a girl, Jackie Burns, at a skate park, but she insists she was just watching the skaters. As the skate gang gets more violent, animosity between Worrell and Clarke also grows fiercer, and the two come to blows in the corridor. A tearful Clarke admits her debt problem to Taviner. Scrutinising CCTV footage reveals Jackie's involvement with the gang: she phones them when a potential victim withdraws money from an ATM. Clarke discovers her telesales commission has fallen through.
#23 - Redemption
Season 17 - Episode 50 - Aired 7/13/2001
Clarke unsuccessfully applies for a police loan. Taviner buys her a pushbike and suggests she sell her scooter, but she is far from impressed. Meanwhile, Carver and Rickman find a young boy, Gavin Billson, overdosed on drugs, and Glaze and Webb investigate some of the local dealers. When it turns out Gavin overdosed on diamorphine, and after several dead ends, suspicion falls on Dr Stuart Bremner, a doctor at St Hugh's, who is also the boyfriend of Clarke's friend Ruth. A review of the hospital's CCTV footage reveals Ruth herself sneaking into a storeroom, and Clarke is forced to arrest her best friend. When Ruth refuses to grass up her lover, Clarke finds herself in a very difficult position.
#24 - The Dark Side
Season 17 - Episode 51 - Aired 7/17/2001
Hayward breaks down during a talk with primary school pupils, when he is forced to talk about the death of his sister. Gilmore is not happy, but the teacher thinks Hayward's sensitivity will help the students get the message, and may also help them trust Hayward enough to report a bully. An old friend of his sister's asks him out, although when he meets her at a gallery opening, Hayward thinks her friends are dealing drugs. Klein and Hayward find the bully, "Red", who has been using two fierce dogs to steal money and mobile phones from school children. They trace the dogs to the flat of drug-addicted prostitute Stacy Dodds, and a search of her flat uncovers a large stash of heroin.
#25 - Angel Rooms
Season 17 - Episode 52 - Aired 7/21/2001
Hayward and Klein arrange to get their stories straight over the missing bag of heroin. Stacy insists her pimp forced her to deal drugs and have sex with "Red". Clarke ends up sleeping with "Phil the Pill", and is surprised when he turns up at Sun Hill the next day and announces himself as DC Phil Raven from the Drugs Squad. Raven arrests Benji Pullinger for intent to supply, but inevitably the missing bag is mentioned in the interview. Station gossip starts to point towards Klein, and Hayward confesses to Gilmore what really happened. While out at a nightclub with his new girlfriend, Fiona, Hayward sees Raven selling drugs, and discovers that he and Fiona are former acquaintances.