Wild Bill – 10 things we learnt from the first promo for ITV’s Rob Lowe crime drama

If not, you can watch it on this page via the YouTube link.

Here, we list 10 things we learnt about the upcoming show from the minute-long teaser:

1. There’s action

The promo opens with a car chase across Lincolnshire’s distinctively flat landscape, which then continues on foot (across, because it’s South Lincolnshire, a cabbage field). There is also some rough and tumble in a scene or two.

2. What’s in a nickname?

There has been little up to this point to explain why Rob Lowe’s high-flying US cop Bill Hixon is known as Wild Bill. Earlier publicity described him as ‘whip-smart, acerbic, and unstoppable’ and that he was ‘smart-mouthed, cynical, and difficult to impress’. Early on in the promo, we get a clue with him displaying some wild characteristics – saying ‘goddamnit’, throwing a cabbage, and yelling at the sky in frustration. He also later knocks a coffee cup off a table!

3. Use of location

The promo has little that is immediately recognisable as Boston, with the countryside more frequently the backdrop. This is despite the Market Place featuring during the filming in November. However, we are treated to an impressive aerial shot of the Stump.

4. Making friends?

In earlier publicity, we were told that Bill Hixon ‘isn’t about making friends’. In one scene, though, as he introduces himself to a member of the public as the new Chief Constable, he seems fairly interested in making friends. The drift of the promo, in fact, is that Hixon is not particularly welcome, with one character saying: “I’m not like everyone else, sir, I’m excited you’re here.”

5. Bad press

In 2016, Boston was named the ‘most murderous’ town in England and Wales by the national press. This was based on the combined number of homicides, attempted murders and conspiracy to murder offences over a 12 month period, expressed as a rate per 100,000 people living in the area. Not everyone was on board with the analysis – MP Matt Warman said it made ‘no statistical sense’ – but it surfaces in the promo nonetheless. This context to events was not mentioned in the original publicity material – Brexit was, but not this tag Boston picked up a few years ago.

6. There’s comedy

Wild Bill is described as a drama, but it appears we can expect some laughs too. This is perhaps not entirely unexpected, as the first press release for the show does have a line in it saying events are ‘funny and dangerous in equal measure’. Despite that, some may have been surprised to see the high-flying US police chief with a first class degree in criminology, a masters in psychopathology, and a doctorate in statistical mapping hitting his head on a steering wheel, presumably in frustration. It would seem a shame to not make the most of Lowe’s comic talents, though.

7. Wild Bill’s motivation

The promo fleshes out the line from initial publicity that Hixon has come to Boston with his teenage daughter in the hope of fleeing a painful past – “I only came here to get my life back on track. Now, I’m disgraced, humiliated, my own daughter won’t speak to me and she is the only reason I came to this godforsaken cabbage patch in the first place.”

8. School’s in

The Sessions House, off Boston’s Market Place, appears to be doubling as a school.

9. Making enemies?

‘You are everything I thought you’d be’, Hixon is told at a swanky affair, and not in a good way, suggesting Lowe’s character will come into conflict with the upper classes during his time in East Lincolnshire as well as its criminal underbelly.

10. When to expect it

The promo reveals we can look forward to watching Wild Bill in June, though an exact air date has still not been revealed.