New New Tricks

New Tricks is a TV series which has been shown on BBC since 2003; it’s a police procedural but with a strong comedy element in the relationship of the main characters, a team of ex-policemen investigating unsolved crimes. The initial team of actors seemed to bring out the best in each other, and their characters; although some of the cases they were set to solve were very serious and dealt with difficult issues, the personalities of the characters stopped the plots from being too dark. The characters themselves had personal issues to deal with, including the death of a wife, rejection by a parent, and alcoholism.

I wrote about New Tricks some time ago; it is a favourite programme but I really felt it was running out of steam. One of the main characters left the series and was replaced by another ex-cop, played by Denis Lawson,  an actor who seemed to gel completely with the old team; the quality, the pace, the dynamics remained… then gradually, one by one the other original characters left too. Alun Armstrong was replaced by Nicholas Lyndhurst, Amanda Redman by Tamzin Outhwaite… It’s hardly surprising the former actors had had enough, Dennis Waterman was in 99 episodes, Amanda Redman in 84, Alun Armstrong in 80…

More new characters replaced the old and I really felt as if it had run out of steam, as if the actors, good though they were, had lost their enthusiasm. So the twelfth, and apparently final series; I didn’t feel the same enthusiasm about it, but watched it out of a sort of loyalty, and it is still good, even when it’s not as good as it used to be. In this twelfth series the last of the old guard, played by Dennis Waterman left, and without giving the game away if you haven’t watched it, he went out with a bang! So a new character arrived for the last eight episodes, a new character played by a favourite actor of mine, Larry Lamb.

I was in for a wonderful surprise! Suddenly the series seemed revitalised, and was back to being what it had been, clever, funny, exciting, interesting, powerfully acted… It’s fantastic! The only sad thing is, of course, that this is the last series… unless the BBC have a change of heart with the great new cast!

This is what I wrote before:

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