Amy Tennant Storyline

From The Argus, a Brighton newspaper

Uniformed coppers and undercover detectives swarmed on a shopping district yesterday [8th Nov].

A desperate high-speed chase to find a missing seven-year-old girl had them darting in among pedestrians walking through the centre of Brighton, pushing shoppers out of the way and sprinting along cobbled streets.

Then the director shouted "cut" and they all went to buy coffee.

Like film director Woody Allen and Oscar winner Jim Broadbent before them, the cast and crew of ITV1 hit show The Bill came to the seaside to film against familiar city backdrops such as the Palace Pier, Madeira Drive and The Lanes.

Main characters such as DI Sam Nixon, played by Lisa Maxwell, and DI Neil Manson, played by Andrew Lancel, starred in scenes for an episode called Chasing Amy, to be screened towards the end of February.

The scenes are part of an ongoing storyline about a father whose daughter goes missing. The fictional cops get a tipoff that she is in Brighton and so they charge down to see if they can find her, with her distraught father in tow.

Cast and extras gathered first thing yesterday in Market Street in The Lanes to enact scenes including a police chase down the narrow street and a poignant moment when dad James mistakenly thinks he sees his little girl across the street. Filming will continue in the city today.

Hanna Lindquist, 21, who has worked at Costa Coffee for ten months, said she arrived at work to find a buzz in the air.

She said: "It was a bit of a surprise to find so many people running around. It was quite exciting. I have never known it be like this here.

"It has been some months since I saw the programme and I got confused about who was a real policeman and who was an actor.

"They all came in for coffee and it was really busy for ages. Not what you would normally expect on a Tuesday."

Paul Sewell, landlord of the Pump House pub next door, said the area was often used for filming TV shows such as Antiques Roadshow and dramas, and so he was not surprised to see the crew turn up. He said: "With the antique shops, jewellery shops and quaint little old buildings like this one there is an attraction for all these shows.

"I didn't see an awful lot happen out there, but there were lots of people running up and down the street."

Lisa Bealby and Dan Coffey, both 30 and drama students at Act in Rock Gardens, Brighton, were chosen as extras for the two-day shoot. They said it was their first experience of TV filming.

Dan, of Chapel Terrace, Brighton, said: "It is great experience and a chance to train on a film set.

"It has been great fun and the crew are lovely, not like on Ricky Gervais' show Extras."

Lisa, of Cromwell Road, Brighton, said: "We had to walk around and up and down streets while undercover cops got into a chase and shoved us out of the way as they rushed past.

"It was very exciting and fast."

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I was begining to think they were never going to bring it up properly again....

this has to be one of the longest storylines in ages! hope it all turns out alright though

yh this has been going for ages, the abi one did aswel but that was actually a good storyline this one hasnt been mentioned that much but it looks like its going to get quite good

you just know shes going to turn up fine! they are not going to do the storyline for that long with a dead body at the end of it!