With evidence suggesting that his cosh was the murder weapon and a trumped-up assault claim from Sainsbury things look bleak for Gerry but DAC Strickland is sure of his innocence and lets him go. ...
Jack Halford deals a devastating blow to UCOS - he's quitting. But before the team can question his reasons, an intriguing new case arrives.
Seventeen years earlier Sandra's first case involved the disappearance, never resolved, of music student Lesley Hewitt and now Lesley's sister Emma has been sent a photo of Lesley walking in a park ...
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Title: New Tricks (2003–2015)
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After a hostage rescue goes wrong, superintendent Sandra Pullman is put in charge of unsolved crimes. With little resources and no back-up she decides to recruit three ex policeman. However times have changed, unlike her new recruits. Jack Halford is yet to get over the loss of his wife, Brian Lane is over obsessed and over medicated, and Gerry Standing is not quite the ladies man he used to be. They may have the experience but it's not like the old days. Not only are they chasing criminals, but they are having to deal with a new police force which does not always appreciate their old style policing. Written by Brian Hallam
New Tricks is one of those rare TV shows that is a true gestalt, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its (very good) parts. How so, you ask? Well, as great as the individual performances were through almost 10 full seasons, the ensemble was what made the show really really good. Their individual unique personalities all played off of one another and enhanced the overall effect.
That came to a screeching halt starting with S10E09, when Amanda Redman left the show. She was clearly the glue that held everything together. The show was somewhat able to survive the loss of Alun Armstrong (barely, because he brought so much to the table) and James Bolam, but not Redman. From that point on Dennis Waterman became a whining annoying P.I.T.A., and the show morphed into a veritable train wreck. (When Waterman was kept in check by Redman, Bolam, and Armstrong, he was good for some comic relief. But when asked to carry more of the weight, he sunk like a stone. It was painful to watch. I had to fast forward through most of his adolescent tirades. He became like a one person GRUMPY OLD MAN show, and it was as tiresome as it was tedious to endure.)
But in fairness, the show's failure towards the end of season 10 was the result of more than just the loss of Redman. Denis Lawson (who replaced Bolam) and Nicholas Lyndhurst (who replaced Armstrong) were mere shadows of their predecessors. They were bland, uninteresting, and brought little if anything to the table the way that Armstrong and Bolam had. The final nail in the coffin, however, was Tamzin Outhwaite, who replaced Redman. She was essentially eye candy, with none of the strength, complexity, charm and charisma exhibited by Redman. No wonder the show died an unceremonious death less than 2 years after the cast was gutted.
Up until that time the quirkiness, humanness (i.e. flaws), charm, and exceptional savant skills of the UCOS squad resulted in one of the most entertaining shows on TV. After S10E08, it was preachy at best, and pure torture at worst. It lost its sense of humor, took itself WAY too seriously, and beat the viewers over the head with its incessant, droning PC messages. Worse than that, the great, diverse, interesting, flawed characters turned into one-dimensional clownish caricatures. They had no warmth, or charm, or intelligence. They were mean spirited and nasty.
And the interesting, well written dramatic plots turned into nothing more than nonsensical two-bit melodrama and a weekly (over)dose of histrionics. Sadly, the show became formulaic (i.e. a formula for failure). Do yourselves a favor...watch every episode right up until S10E09, then start watching something else. If you do, you'll be rewarded with one of the best TV shows ever. If you keep on watching after that, you'll regret it. You've been warned.