The Bill (series 23)

Series 23 of British television drama The Bill was broadcast from 3 January until 28 December 2007. The series consisted of 92 episodes, and saw the conclusion of the show's longest running-storyline, featuring the disappearance of schoolgirl Amy Tennant. This series saw the return of single-themed episodes, removing much of the serialiased format formally introduced in 2002 under producer Paul Marquess. This series also became the first series where episodes were aired out of production order, making the broadcast order significantly different to the production order.

This series saw the return of several multi-part story arcs, the likes of which had last featured in the second half of Series 17. Again, several new characters were introduced into the show, including several semi-regular characters, such as non-operational police staff and crime scene examiners. The series also saw the departure of the show's longest-running cast member to date, with Trudie Goodwin leaving the role of June Ackland, and her final episode being broadcast on 8 March 2007. This was also the last episode not to feature an on-screen title. A new title sequence was introduced at the beginning of the series, however, the theme tune remained the same.

Episodes 484 and 485 were the first episodes to be broadcast out of production order. Despite at the time not even being billed for broadcast, and the 'previously' and 'next time' segments not matching the episodes around them, the episodes were brought forward due to heavy demand from the British viewing public, who where on tenterhooks to see the conclusion of the long-running Zain Nadir and Kristen Shaw storyline. This also meant that the 'previously' and 'next time' segments on the subsequent episodes had to be re-edited to show this, and that two small additional scenes had to be recorded to be placed into Episode 480 to reference the death of Honey Harman. For the DVD release, in order to avoid confusion, these episodes have been re-numbered and now serve as 480 and 481, with the following four episodes re-numbered to 482–485 respectively.

On 2 April 2014, the complete series was released on DVD in Australia as a Region 0, playable anywhere in the world. The DVD release carries in the episodes in broadcast order, rather than production order; meaning that the DVD synopsis printed on the sleeve is heavily incorrect. The DVD synopsis also removes all titles (including those carried on screen), and continues to tally the episodes by number. The DVD release does contain episodes 540–542, "Moving Target" Parts 1–3, due to licensing rights for these episodes not being available.