New Tricks

7:30pm – Saturday, July 18 on ABC1

Ministry of Defence spooks try to silence the UCOS team when they reinvestigate the death of British soldier Eric Trimble. Just weeks before a tour of duty in Iraq, Trimble – along with three other squaddies Andy Merrill, Keith Sharratt and Ronnie Glazebrook – was sent to the MoD’s Influenza Research Unit to take part in a medical trial. All four played truant one night, but Trimble never returned. He was found beaten to death two miles from the Unit. Was Trimble the victim of a racist attack, an Army cover-up, or was his death a direct result of the experiments being carried out by the IRU.

When the MoD’s Detective Inspector Hamilton tries to stifle the case and the Army becomes obstructive, Jack Halford (James Bolam) and DAC Strickland form an unlikely bond and break protocol to get answers.

With the three surviving soldiers now suffering from either serious psychological, drink or memory problems, can the IRU’s Dr Matheson shed any light on the true nature of the trials.

Brian’s behaviour is cause for concern – he appears to have rallied since being fooled into thinking he can drink just one glass of wine, but his alarming new obsession is masking the truth.

7:30pm – Saturday, July 11 on ABC1

Brian Lane (Alun Armstrong) struggles to control and conceal his desire to drink again. He finds the perfect refuge in a commune at the centre of the team’s investigation into the death of university student Justin King.

Justin disappeared two months before his body was found on wasteland. The case was never concluded but his mother, Diane, has spent the last two years searching for answers about her son’s death – regularly conducting her own enquiries outside his old university to see if anyone remembers him. Her tenacity finally pays off when 18-year-old Heidi recognises Justin’s photograph and admits that he had lived with her and her ‘family’ at the time of his disappearance. But Heidi has no ordinary family, as the team discover when they pay a visit to her home – a self-sufficient community in Waltham Forest headed by the wise and kindly Beatrice.

While Pullman (Amanda Redmond) is deeply suspicious of the commune’s way of life and outraged to discover that the ‘family’ had encouraged Justin and the then underage Heidi to be lovers, Brian embraces its sense of freedom and sees it as a way to hide from his own problems. But when the body of an Eastern European pimp is found at the site, even Brian has to concede that life there isn’t as free-spirited and safe as he would like to believe.

Meanwhile, Gerry’s (Dennis Waterman) own problems with his ‘daughter’ Emily lead him to form an unlikely bond with Diane’s estranged husband, Melvin. The loss of their son makes Gerry even more determined to re-establish contact with Emily, who has not taken his calls since she discovered the truth about the DNA test at the trial in episode one.

7:30pm – Saturday, July 4 on ABC1

Brian Lane (Alun Armstrong) engages in some dangerous mind games in a case that threatens to completely destabilise him when the team reinvestigates the death of Raymond Briers.

In 1999, Briers was killed by his wife, Katie, after she had agreed to be hypnotised by illusionist Billy Carse for his television show. Acquitted of his murder, Katie has recently started receiving emails from a source known only as Merlin, naming Carse’s rival, Brandon Skye, as her husband’s killer. Could Skye have sabotaged Carse’s act to produce the ultimate trick that would destroy his reputation.

Hailed as the messiah of modern magic and a pioneer of neuro-linguistic programming, Skye immediately gets under Lane’s skin. The two men enter a game of intellectual one-upmanship when Lane goes undercover at a corporate motivational weekend run by Skye’s girlfriend, Lulu Questor. But Skye is a master of illusion and has one final trick up his sleeve, which is guaranteed to push Lane over the edge.

Gerry (Dennis Waterman), meanwhile, meets his own nemesis in Carse’s brother, Guy. No one actually examines Guy too closely because he is in a wheelchair, but Gerry can see beyond that. With Carse dead, Guy seems keen to clear his brother’s name and restore his reputation.

But nothing on this case is quite what it appears to be. A visit to Dr Neville Moroni, resident expert at The Magic Circle, has a lasting effect on Gerry. Deeply sceptical, he agrees to be hypnotised by Moroni, with unspeakable results…

7:30pm – Saturday, June 27 on ABC1

Pullman’s (Amanda Redman) professional and personal worlds collide when the team reopens a case originally investigated by bent copper DCI Bobby McAdam, a colleague of her dead father. Having discovered that her father, a police hero in her eyes, was being investigated for corruption shortly before his death, Pullman uses McAdam to find out the truth about her dad’s past. But the truth leads to a discovery that puts enormous pressure on her already-volatile relationship with her mother, Grace.

Meanwhile, the boys are enjoying the fruits of their labour at Felspar’s Brewery. Family run, Felspar’s was rocked by the death of 26-year-old Chief Brewer Graham Thompson, who drowned in one of the fermentation tanks.

At the time of the original investigation, DCI McAdam had been too busy chatting up the victim’s girlfriend, Anna Hodgkiss, to bother taking her seriously when she claimed that Graham was anxious about something at work. However, the team does believe Graham may have been deeply troubled. But does the answer to his death lie with brewery owner, Sir Wilfred ‘Freddy’ Felspar and those working for him, or does it lie in the beer itself? While Brian (Alun Armstrong) takes on the brewery, Gerry (Dennis Waterman) and Jack (James Bolam) tackle the brew. Surprisingly, both result in the same outcome.

7:30pm – Saturday, June 20 on ABC1

Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman) meets his heroes, seventies rock band Bad Faith, when the UCOS team reinvestigates the death of lead guitarist Andy Fletcher. The official verdict was suicide, but the deathbed confession of a witness, die-hard fan Lori Slade, that Fletcher wasn’t alone in his house the night he was supposed to have killed himself, prompts the team to reopen the case.

Meanwhile, Brian (Alun Armstrong) has more pressing matters on his mind. In a touching reunion he tracks down Jack and, with the aid of an ice lolly and a bit of tough love, he finally persuades his friend and colleague to return to UCOS.

Reunited, the detectives immerse themselves in the rock’n'roll world of Bad Faith.

Gerry behaves like an overexcited puppy at the prospect of meeting his idols, but 30 years is a long time and the remaining band members don’t quite live up to the legends he remembers.

A visit to Fletcher’s mother helps Jack reconnect with his desire to get justice for the victims. Gail Fletcher hands over the precious notebooks that her son had sent her which contain handwritten lyrics together with a bank statement revealing that Andy withdrew more than £12,000 on the day he died. It also becomes clear that she has never received any of the royalties owed to her son since his death.

The most alarming discovery is that DAC Strickland is not only a fan of Bad Faith, but he is also something of a musician and, to Gerry’s horror, he finds himself seconded to Strickland’s band as a singer.

7:30pm – Saturday, June 13 on ABC1

An arson attack on 1980s music station Roxy Radio ten years ago resulted in the death of the popular, but controversial DJ, Johnny Deacon, and left the cleaner, Sharon Revie, blind and scarred for life. The station’s media- mogul owner, Sir Max Wyatt, who was already under public scrutiny for ripping off the company employees’ pension fund, committed suicide shortly after the studios burned down. Despite suggestions of an insurance scam or revenge attack, the original investigation drew a blank.

When Jeremy Kirkham (Reece Shearsmith), super-geek and life president of Deacon’s fan club, campaigns for the case to be reopened, the UCOS team gains a murder inquiry and Brian Lane (Alun Armstrong) gains a new friend.

Socially inept, awkward and clumsy, Jeremy finds it is a meeting of minds when he shows Brian his fully catalogued collection of all Deacon’s programs, including his distressing last broadcast on the night of the fire.

Deacon’s producer, cheesy DJ Graham Madeley, escaped the fire. With his trophy younger wife Sarah and his office now a shrine to his dead friend and the good old days, Madeley’s loyalty and hero-worship of Deacon seem at odds with how others viewed their relationship. So Pullman (Amanda Redman) sends Brian undercover at one of the station’s fun days. But Brian is less in disguise and more in full fancy-dress costume, thanks to his wife Esther and her interpretation of the 1980s.

With Halford (James Bolam) missing since Ricky Hanson’s trial, the team is under pressure not only to deliver on the case, but to cover Halford’s prolonged absence. Strickland is keen to find a permanent replacement for Jack, but Pullman and Standing (Dennis Waterman) call his bluff, threatening to quit UCOS rather than work with someone new on the team.

7:30pm – Saturday, June 6 on ABC1

When ex soap-star Catherine Austin (Kate Magowan) writes a biography of her late father, actor Michael Austin, the inclusion of a letter that appears to be a death threat from his rival Billy Morley forces the team to reopen the 1992 case into his death.

Austin died on stage during the opening night performance of Death At The Masked Ball in what the original investigation concluded was a tragic accident.

But having been responsible for pulling the trigger of the prop gun that killed her husband, his widow, actress Helen Brownlow (Claire Bloom), has spent the last 16 years consumed with guilt, only now finding the strength to perform again.

Will raking over the past push the already fragile actress over the edge.

DAC Strickland’s nephew James (Will Kemp) joins the team to help out when Halford (James Bolam) goes AWOL after the trial. A cocky young recruit being fast-tracked through the Force, James is anything but one of the boys and, when he develops a crush on Pullman (Amanda Redman), Standing (Dennis Waterman) and Lane (Alun Armstrong) show no mercy.

The case brings out the thespian in Lane, who after unwittingly auditioning for Julius Caesar believes he has found a new calling, and Standing discovers that you should never meet your heroes when he questions Tommy Jackson, the arrogant star of a 1990s detective show.

7:30pm – Saturday, May 30 on ABC1

With new evidence, advances in forensics and some slightly unorthodox policing methods, Superintendent Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman) and her Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (UCOS) are back reinvestigating the unsolved murders and cold cases the London Metropolitan Police has long since filed away.

Brought out of early retirement, Jack Halford (James Bolam), Brian Lane (Alun Armstrong) and Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman) continue to prove that there’s still a place for old-fashioned policing. They may be eccentric, bend the rules, ignore procedure, follow their hunches and take risks, but they get results. It’s down to Superintendent Sandra Pullman to keep her team on the right side of the law.

In this new series, the team faces some tough challenges. There are huge professional and personal stakes at play when Ricky Hanson (David Troughton) stands trial for the attempted murder of Jack Halford; Standing faces the consequences of lying to his ‘daughter’ Emily; Pullman has to reconcile herself with the truth about her late father; and Lane’s old demons come back to haunt him as the repercussions of the trial begin to hit home.

The team is forced to overcome personal obstacles in an attempt to maintain business as usual. Cases involving the death of a radio DJ in an arson attack, a prostitute who received an unexpected windfall in a client’s Will and an actor’s death on stage during a performance are among the investigations that also test the team.

Saturday, 7 February 2009 7:30pm

Encore Episode

They may have handed in their badges and collected their pensions but Lane (Alun Armstrong), Standing (Dennis Waterman) and Halford (James Bolam) are back for repeat screenings of New Tricks starting Saturday February 7 at 7:30pm on ABC1. The team work with boss Pullman (Amanda Redman) at the London Metropolitan Police as civilians investigating unsolved crimes as part of the Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (UCOS).

Episode One – Lady’s Pleasure By Lisa Holdsworth

When Stephen Murray wins his legal battle to return the wreck of his prized sports car, Sandra Pullman decides to get her team of ex-coppers to reinvestigate the five-year-old case of his wife’s death at the wheel.

The dead woman, Nancy Murray, a school teacher, had been receiving anonymous letters threatening to send explicit pictures of her and a secret lover to the school board. Neither the author nor the lover was identified in the original investigation and the only clue to the lover’s identity is a small tattoo.

Pullman suspects Nancy’s husband Stephen, but decides to widen the investigation and pursues Nancy’s two closest friends – Christine (Siobhan Redmond), now headmistress at Nancy’s school, and Josie (Denise Black) a sex therapist – for some answers. It soon becomes clear that the two share a secret about their friend’s death and further investigation of the secret lover’s tattoo leads the team to Larry Bevan (Steve John Shepherd), a male prostitute, who has links to all three women.

7:30PM NEW TRICKS: BIG TOPPED Final
Saturday, 17 November 2007

Roll up! Roll up! The UCOS team findthemselves at the circus when they are assigned to reinvestigate the suspicious death of the Great Miraculo aka Bert Dignam. Don’t miss the final episode of New Tricks, Saturday 17 November at 7.30pm.

In 1990, ringmaster and circus owner Bert Dignam was found burnt to death inside his caravan at Spingles Circus. Mysteriously, all that remained of him were his feet, and nothing else in the caravan was burnt. How or why he died was never discovered. To try and solve the puzzle, Brian attempts to recreate his death using a whole pig carcass as the body.

It doesn’t take long for the case to get twisted. With pressure from Bert’s long lost daughter and a lack of leads from his old friends, the team struggle to get a break.

Off the case, Sandra’s trust in her team is shattered when she discovers they have hidden an important secret about her past from her. The news that her father, a Detective Inspector killed himself while under investigation for corruption, throws into doubt everything she has believed in. Will she ever be able to get past her feelings of betrayal?