2016 Can you teach an old dog New Tricks?

It is appropriate to spend more than a passing reference to the TV series New Tricks because it is about the kind of Creative Unit I have stressed is at the root cause of the News of the World Scandal and the golden rule that such units need to be closely managed and its members removed from the organisation when they cross the line are caught and their misdeeds cannot be covered up.

The joy of New Tricks now coming to the end of its 8th season has always been the strength and interaction between the three old codgers who form the unsolved crimes unit headed by Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman) who was put in charge of the unit as a punishment but despite her ambitious married to the job nature has become addicted to keeping the trio out of serious trouble as they solve every mystery brought to their attention

67 episodes have been created of which two remain to be shown and the series has progressed from 6 to 8 and now 10 episodes a season and to be shown in 20 countries including the USA where there is a home grown product, and in Norway and Uruguay.

Gerald "Gerry" Standing (Ex-Detective Sergeant) is played by Dennis Waterman whose professional career as sidekick to John Thaw in the Sweeney and George Cole in Minder, brought him public recognition and over a dozen film roles as well as other TV performances. He has been married and divorced three times in real life and in the series continuing to have good relations with all the women who have meals together with their children now adults. Gerry continues to have a roving eye and although his role in the series reminds of a former Assistant Police Commissioner embroiled in the News of the World Scandal Gerry’s reputation is based on having been incorruptible but with a tendency to break or use the rulebook to the job in hand. Not that the former Assistant Commissioner was corruptible but his performance before the House of Commons Committee was that of Jack the Lad


Gerry is Jack the Lad personified, risk taker and gambler which nicely bring me to Geordie James Bolam who cane to national TV fame as one of the Likely Lads but whose best series for me has been his role as the traditional Jazz loving teacher in the Beiderbecke Tapes although he is also still widely regarded for the first of the great series based in he North East as Jack Ford in When the Boat Comes in. In this series he plays John Alan "Jack" Halford (Ex-Detective Chief Superintendent) He still speaks to his deceased wife Mary in the memorial garden at their former home after she was knocked down by a villain although the crime was solved a series or two back, her death is once more brought to the fore by the latest cases they are asked to investigate that of a run down cyclist who has lost his memory although recovered his physical strength.

The third member is the wonderful actor Alun Armstrong not that the other two are also not wonderful but Alan is exceptional with nine years with the Royal Shakespeare Company and is another man from the North East, in this instance County Durham. He also appeared in the Sweeney, in Get Carter and in Our Friends in the North. He has appeared in forty films and an even greater number of TV and Stage shows. In the series he plays Brian Lane (Ex-Detective Inspector) bookish with instant memory recall he clings to the same clothes and habits, lacks all social abilities, a recovering alcoholic and obsessive compulsive he is saved by having a loyal loving wife whose patience is frequently tested beyond

In the episode last week they are asked to investigate The death of Kathy Green, who ran a popular market stall, and whose death is thought to be linked to a current series of drug rapes. In fact this is not so although they are able to put the suspect behind bars as a result of dogged analysis of all the reported crimes by Brian Lane. He works out that the criminal must have experimented with the dose of the drug which he administered via coffee from his roadside stall and this leads to an analysis of reported road traffic accidents in the immediate area of the stall in a two year period before the first established but unsolved crime. The investigation of the death does confirm that the woman took her own life because of the pain she felt at having given up an illegitimate daughter for adoption and because of other problems in her life. The daughter is traced and Amanda Redman helps the girl to understand and accept that although placed for adoption she was loved throughout with a box of recovered letters never sent and also learns why having contacted her birth mother she was sent away. Another aspect of the plot is the relationship between the deceased woman her husband and son of the marriage and the Market superintendent who has had a series of jobs working undercover for a corrupt politician gangster. The Market Superintendent also goads people into attacking him and then claiming damages with the help of an expensive legal team provided by the corrupt politician.

In Moving Target" Samantha Gerson comes to UCOS to conduct a study of older men in the workplace. She asks the team to investigate the hit-and-run accident that left her brother Darren Gerson with a brain injury and memory loss. She wants the team to reassure her brother it was just an accident but he believes that he was targeted for a package he was carrying and the team quickly arrive at the same conclusion and assume that drugs are involved when they find out that he was asked to take a package from an Import firm to an address of someone he had visited on a regular basis. The man has JLS tattooed on his arm which another courier says was the initials of a girl friend they argued over.

It emerges that the owner of the Import firm established an uncut diamond smuggling racket with the person where the packaged was to have been delivered and who has since left the country. They eventually discover that the owner organiser of the courier service was responsible for the hit and run and for the subsequent murder of the cyclist during the episode because he was being cut out of the racket after the cyclist commenced to have a sexual relationship with the owner of the import firm. She turns Queens Evidence after being caught retrieving the diamonds from the last package held in a bank deposit box. The sub plot is that JLS stands for an organisation of cyclists who carried out a score of traffic jams in central London because of the way motorists treat cyclists in the capital. The knocked down cyclist had been the leader of the campaign assisted by a girl friend and others but had wanted to take the campaign further acquiring explosives from his cut in the diamond racket with a view to blowing up cars.

The interest of the team only occurs because of the visit of the psychologist who after observing the trio and interviewing them concludes that as creatives they are atypical and therefore does not form a valid study group for the project, which she should have known beforehand. The series has also provided work for a large number of guest performers so long may it reign and so says all of us and them.