19 Jun 09
Producing any television programme (or movie) can be a challenging process, especially when you are working to a vigourously enforced running time. Every episode of The Bill can run at no more than 46 minutes and 40 seconds, which sometimes means that we have to trim scenes in the edit achieve this. Because we have to ensure that the story is driving forward and making sense, it's sometimes the more characterful moments that hit the cutting room floor. Luckily our timings are very accurate so it's rare that we lose something that we don't want to. On this occasion, the episode was running long, and something had to give. We decided that, nice thought it was, the Phil reference wasn't crucial to the plot of the episode, so with regret we trimmed it from the episode. Lisa Maxwell wasn't aware of this when she recorded her interview in which she told Phil and Sam fans to keep their eyes peeled...
... so here is the scene in its entirity, in response to requests from Bill fans! It's not a long scene, but it does give an intruiging glimpse into what became of Phil and Sam's friendship after Phil Hunter left Sun Hill.