New Tricks

8:30pm – Friday, December 14 on ABC1

When someone tries to assassinate Stephen Fisher (Tim McInnerny), Strickland (Anthony Calf) calls the UCOS team together asking for their help.

Thirty years ago when he and Fisher were at Sandhurst together, they were involved in a covert operation on behalf of the security service. A team was assembled to break into the house of a journalist, Simon Bisley, who was believed to have information on IRA arms deals. With Bisley killed in a hit and run accident shortly after the operation, another member of the team found dead days ago and Fisher now targeted, Strickland believes that someone is out to kill all the original team.

But when a connection is made to known gangster, Carl Dillon (Max Beesley Snr), and MI5, Strickland and Fisher realise the threat may be coming from within the security service itself.

8:30pm – Friday, December 7 on ABC1

Strickland (Anthony Calf) sends McAndrew (Denis Lawson) and Standing (Dennis Waterman) to Scotland for a week to help Glasgow Police establish a new UCOS section led by DCI Fiona MacDougall (Kate Dickie).

While there, they find themselves caught up in a cold case from 1993, the murder of bookie James Soutar.

When McAndrew learns that the case was originally investigated by Frank McNair (Hilton McRae) – a corrupt cop who once slept with McAndrew’s wife – he’s eager to take it on and Standing reluctantly agrees. Soutar was brought up in care but then became a wealthy man owning a string of betting shops. On his death he left fifteen thousand pounds to a 16-year-old girl in care, Cathy Sinclair (Neve McIntosh), who claims to have no idea who he is or why he left her the money.

When Standing and McAndrew start to ask questions, they find themselves the victims of a campaign of intimidation. However, a revelation from McAndrew’s girlfriend Charley (Kathleen McDermott) helps Standing and McAndrew uncover a scandal that has lain dormant for twenty years.

8:30pm – Friday, November 30 on ABC1

UCOS investigate the murder of Max Klein (Edward Baker-Duly), an East German immigrant found bleeding to death near a block of communal garages in 2007 and repeating a mysterious phrase ‘blue flower’. At the time of his death Max worked in a nearby recycling facility, but the team learn that before Max came to the UK he worked for the German Government as a ‘puzzler’, piecing together thousands of shredded Stasi documents.

A friend of Max’s, Grace Cusack (Elizabeth Berrington), tells the team that Max came to London looking for his long-lost daughter Mia (Kate Bracken) whom Max and his wife Alicia (Aislinn Sands) smuggled out of East Germany as a baby. Having lost a child herself in a hit-and-run, Grace formed a bond with Max in the months before he died and seems to be the only person who knew anything about him. However when the team discover reports proving that Max had at one time been a Stasi officer, they are left unsure what to think of him.

When the team eventually track Mia down they find an angry young woman who believes that Max was directly responsible for her mother’s death in a Stasi cell. However, Pullman (Amanda Redman) is convinced there’s more to the story.

8:30pm – Friday, November 23 on ABC1

UCOS investigate the murder of Sean Docherty (Cian Barry), a talented young poet from Belfast whose burnt body was found in the scrapyard of known gangster Mehtin Topal (Philip Arditti). When the team talk to Sean’s brother-in-law Eoin (Patrick O’Kane), they discover that Sean had connections to a number of local criminals including Topal and his rival, Gourkan Ozil. However, Lane (Alun Armstrong) becomes convinced that the secret of Sean’s murder lies not in his criminal activities but in his poetry, a theory supported by the strange behaviour of Sean’s ex-flatmate and fellow poet Luke Oswald (James Murray).

When Sean’s ex-girlfriend, Professor Sarah Powell (Simone Lahbib), reports that she has been stalked, the team are amazed to discover the identity of her stalker.

8:30pm – Friday, November 16 on ABC1

Two years ago, 16-year-old tennis champion Alice Kemp (Georgie Castle) fell to her death from the balcony of a penthouse apartment after losing a crucial match to great rival Fawn Bramall (Martha Mackintosh). Did Alice jump, or was she pushed? Alice’s mother Victoria (Tamzin Outhwaite) seems convinced that her daughter committed suicide, but when UCOS delve deeper into Alice’s world they soon discover several people with motives for her murder, including her coach Nick Hoyle (Benjamin Wilkin) and her agent Anthony Marshall (Alexei Sayle).

McAndrew (Denis Lawson) points out that those with the most to gain were Fawn Bramall and her pushy mother Irina (Brana Bajic), but it proves impossible to get any information from the shy and subdued Fawn. However, when Pullman (Amanda Redman) realises that Fawn was not in fact Alice’s enemy but her best friend, the truth about Alice’s life and death starts to emerge.

Meanwhile, Standing (Dennis Waterman) wonders if he did enough to encourage his own daughter’s sporting ambitions and Lane (Alun Armstrong) hatches a plan to turn Scampy into a film star.

8:30pm – Friday, November 9 on ABC1

When the body of missing computer expert Martin Longthorn turns up in the morgue of a teaching hospital under a false name, Strickland (Anthony Calf) asks the team to look into the case. Martin worked for the Metropolitan Police and his disappearance caused concern at the time. However, it now appears that Martin died of natural causes so why was his body hidden – and by whom.

Catherine Green (Sarah Smart), who went on a blind date with Longthorn the evening he disappeared, tells the team that he left to go to a mysterious work meeting that night. With access to sensitive police information including the names of undercover officers and the revelation that Longthorn was in contact with a number of online hackers known as The Roguenet Group, the team are concerned that operations may have been compromised.

Meanwhile, Lane (Alun Armstrong) finds it difficult to accept McAndrew (Denis Lawson) as the new UCOS team member and Esther (Susan Jameson) is forced to intervene.

8:30pm – Friday, November 2 on ABC1

The UCOS team’s feathers are ruffled with the arrival of Steve McAndrew (Denis Lawson), a retired detective from Glasgow. Brought in to help reinvestigate one of his original cases, McAndrew’s policing methods, and personal agenda, certainly raise a few eyebrows.

Seventeen-year-old Georgia Wright (Michelle Duncan) went missing in Scotland in 2003 and at the time of the original investigation was presumed dead, a conclusion that neither McAndrew nor Georgia’s family ever accepted and that has haunted them since.

When Georgia’s DNA is found at the scene of a robbery at a petrol station in Clapham proving she is still alive, it is clear that this case is very personal for McAndrew and he is determined to find her with or without the team’s help. But as the team adjust to McAndrew’s approach to the job they also learn a few tricks from him.

8:30pm – Friday, October 26 on ABC1

UCOS reinvestigate the suspected suicide of young Foreign Office diplomat Annabel Tilson who had not only suffered a miscarriage the week before her body was found in a frozen London lake, but a humiliating fall from grace professionally after a government laptop was stolen from her home.

Her fiance Eddie (Julian Peedle-Calloo), who is profoundly deaf, and twin sister Minnie (Sharon Small) believe her death was somehow connected to sensitive information held on the missing computer and blame her FCO boss, Peter Hammond (James Wilby), for her downfall and demise.

After clashing with Hammond, Pullman (Amanda Redman) warms to the conspiracy theory idea and decides to ignore DAC Strickland’s (Anthony Calf) advice to tread carefully, in order to explore a possible cover up at the Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, smitten with Eddie’s interpreter Vera (Josette Simon), Gerry (Dennis Waterman) decides to learn sign language, with mixed results.

8:30pm – Friday, October 19 on ABC1

When the body of young PE teacher Jason Bowe is discovered in woodlands adjoining a prestigious boarding school, UCOS are asked to investigate the case quickly and discreetly. However, with the school busy preparing for a visit by prominent MP Geoffrey Parks (Tom Knight), its headmistress is less than happy about the UCOS team’s presence there.

When Standing (Dennis Waterman) makes a discovery about another teacher, the team realise that they’re dealing with a much wider and more complicated series of crimes that go back many years.

Meanwhile, Lane (Alun Armstrong) struggles to cope with the secret he’s been keeping.

8:30pm – Friday, October 12 on ABC1

New Tricks is back for Series 9 – but this time there are changes ahead for the UCOS team.

The Unsolved Crime and Open Case squad is keeping busy, with its remit to re-investigate crimes that were never conclusively closed – and put them to rest. Shootings, murders, art fraud, apparent suicides, missing persons – all cases from the past that ended with as many questions as answers. Pullman’s (Amanda Redman) officers have a real hunger for the job and are finding a surprising incidence of cover-up and conspiracy. But these old dogs won’t roll over easily.

In episode one of this new series Jack Halford (James Bolam) deals a devastating blow to UCOS, he’s quitting. But before the team – Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman), Brian Lane (Alun Armstrong) and Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman) – can question the reasons behind his decision and persuade him to stay, shadowy Whitehall Intelligence figure Stephen Fisher (Tim McInnerny) arrives with one of his secret cases, the unsolved murder of a woman dating back 100 years, giving them just 24 hours to solve it.

Will the team manage to change Jack’s mind.

Starring: Alun Armstrong, James Bolam, Amanda Redman and Dennis Waterman.