The Bill is a long-running British television police procedural, first broadcast on 16 October, 1984 and transmitted on ITV, at 20:00 on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Past episodes can be seen on UKTV Gold.

The Bill is set in and around Sun Hill police station in the fictional London borough of Canley in East London. Other police stations within the Canley Borough Operational Command Unit (BOCU), mentioned but (usually) unseen, are Barton Street, which is the location of Borough Headquarters, Stafford Row and Spicer Street. Canley is approximately contiguous with the real London Borough of Tower Hamlets, but filming takes place all over London, mainly in South London and particularly the London Borough of Merton, where the Sun Hill set is located (on Deer Park Road, SW19). The main location used when the show is filmed on an estate is the Cambridge Estate, in south west London. Other main estates used are Durand Close, in Carshalton, and Roundshaw estate in Wallington, London. Sometimes scenes are filmed in East London and notably the London Docklands standing in for Canley. Canley is also the name of a real district within the city of Coventry, some 100 miles north of London.

The Bill is unusual among police shows: it takes a serial format and it does not focus on one particular area of police work. The show focuses on the work and lives of patrol and response officers on one relief in the uniform division, and the work of the CID. In its current serial format, some stories are cleared up in an episode or two, whereas others can stretch over months or even in some cases approaching a year.

It started as a one-off drama for ITV entitled Woodentop; this pilot show starred Mark Wingett as PC Jim Carver and Trudie Goodwin as WPC June Ackland on Carver's first day on the beat at Sun Hill police station. It was originally devised by Geoff McQueen, and it impressed ITV so much that they decided to make a series out of it. Wingett left the cast in early 2005, while Goodwin's last episode was broadcast on 8 March, 2007 (coincidentally the last episode since the serialised format was introduced by Paul Marquess to be broadcast without an episode title).

Uniform officers and detectives from Sun Hill police station enforce law and order on a day to day basis. A policeman's job is much more than just catching criminals; in order to survive each day they must deal with frustrating members of the public, and often their own colleagues. From petty thieves to violent drug dealers, life is never easy for the members of the Metropolitan Police Force. Written by ttl