I ALWAYS understood The Bill.

I admit, it could be a bit soap opera-ish, a bit like a cop version of Casualty, but the storylines were sufficiently interesting to hold your attention.

The antics of the officers at Sun Hill police station were not beyond the comprehension of people like me, whose brains only function so far in getting to grips with the complex web of criminal activity and police investigations typical of so many modern-day British police dramas.

And, crucially, being on ITV, it had advert breaks, so you could make a cup of tea without missing something.

I like Line of Duty, but I wouldn’t dare so much as blow my nose during an episode in case I missed a vital piece of the jigsaw. It’s all so complicated, despite the officers of AC-12 holding regular meetings to keep baffled viewers in the picture. I regularly lose track, with people whizzing about in Apprentice-style convoys and shooting each other.

I must ask my husband “What happened then?” at least six times during each episode. Living in a low-tech house we don’t have all those stop-start-pause-rewind services that most people benefit from nowadays and which must help enormously with cop show viewing. And do we really need so many acronyms? I spend half each episode on Google trying to find out what they all mean.

Perfect with a TV-dinner, The Bill was easy viewing. It didn’t demand note-taking, acronyms were limited to PC, DI and DCI, and it was also plausible. From the cast to the locations, it was realistic.

Not many police shows are - take Vera. Is there a police detective anywhere in the UK like Vera? I know we shouldn’t stereotype, but she looks like she belongs in the WI tent at a country show rather than a police tent around a mutilated corpse. For that reason alone I just can’t take the programme seriously.

Then there’s Lewis, Hathaway and detectives who, like Morse before them (only minus the classic car - impractical and implausible in any police force), stroll around the picturesque heart of Oxford, occasionally meeting up at a riverside pub to swap notes. I’ve never seen them on a housing estate or even in a control room with other officers. I tune in purely for the scenery.

Macella has gone from reasonably watchable to plain bonkers, with the most recent series containing an unconvincing undercover policing plot that in real life would have been rumbled within the first hour. That’s how long I gave the new series before deciding not to persevere with it.

It’s not that I hate hard-to-comprehend plot lines - the best police drama I’ve seen in years is Spiral, a subtitled French series aired on BBC4, whose characters, while not being particularly likeable, really get under your skin. It is suspenseful, gripping, compelling, you name it - everything you could possibly want in a cop show. Sadly, after eight series, it has now ended.

But, I am pleased to report, after ten years away from our screens, The Bill is returning It is coming back under the name Sun Hill

Bradford-born Simon Rouse played DCI Jack Meadows was in the original. I don’t know whether he will be back - if the series were to continue to reflect real life he would have retired at 50 on a whacking great pension - but it would be great if he made an appearance.

I interviewed him once and remember telling him how my husband and I enjoyed watching the show while having our tea. That’s the sort of show it was, nice and easy, ideal with oven chips. Let’s hope the new series is along the same lines.