New Tricks

- Season 8

(2011)

In 2001 pathologist Bob Ruxton gave a verdict of accidental death on palaeontologist Bernard Fletcher, who died from a supposed fall at a dinner given by Mondial Oil Company in Bernard's museum. Now that verdict is declared unsound and the UCOS team reopen the case. Bernard supported ecology and disapproved of Mondial's work but, though married, he was a ladies' man having an affair with colleague Marie Braden. Marie's ex-boyfriend, Mark Slater quit the museum to set up as a trader in fossils, a lucrative business and it was alleged that Bernard sacked him for ...

Following a warehouse robbery, Pete Offord's DNA is linked to that of an anonymous tramp who was murdered on a London Underground train 15 years earlier. Pete's snobbish aunt Janice, who cast his mother Iris out long ago, directs the team to Iris's 'unsuitable' lover in Essex, David Allenforth, a depressive who went missing just before the murder. David's brother Charles had hired a disreputable private eye McHugh to trace him but he drew a blank. No Ticket Tony, however, a terminally ill former associate of David's, did locate him and holds the key to the mystery, ...

The UCOS team are drawn into a world of immigration, Albanian gangs and family feuds when they reinvestigate the death of an unidentified man.

The UCOS team reinvestigates a highly sensitive case when new information links an unexplained death to a series of drug rapes in East London.

Psychologist Samantha Gerson comes to UCOS to carry out a work study on older men. However she also wants the team to look into a suspicious hit and run from six years earlier, the victim being her brother Darren, a cycle courier. Darren suffered memory loss but now as his memory returns, he recalls that the package he was carrying was stolen and suspects foul play. His client - and lover - Claudia Scott, imported Moroccan furniture and Jack suspects a drug connection but Darren was also the founder of GLS, an anarchist group committed to ridding London of cars. When ...

Some past memories and feelings are stirred up when Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman is reunited with an old flame, DCI James Larson.

In 2004 physics professor Philip MacKenna was apparently abducted from a Paris-bound train. His journey was last minute, after a colleague was robbed, and witnesses at the time proved to be using false identities, suggesting a plot to kidnap him for his expertise. Now his wife is getting cryptic emails, impossible to trace, suggesting he is alive, but she has been holding back a secret. A tip off from a Whitehall mandarin leads the team closer to the truth.

Stephanie Parr tells the team that her biker boyfriend Reese Chapman, as a rite of passage, must kill a rival gang leader who supposedly murdered his father Eddie, founder of the violent criminal Braves biker gang when she is sure the killer was Marcus York, the club's current president. Superintendent Barlow asks the team to back off as he is surveying the Brave for drug-peddling but when Stephanie is attacked Sandra resolves to continue, despite a lack of witnesses for fear of York and Barlow's unhelpful attitude. David, Stephanie's father, holds the key but the ...

A website highlighting unexplained disappearances alerts the team to the death of young mechanic Christopher Collins seven years earlier. Sandra discovers he was really called Tommy Barton, and was on a witness protection scheme having testified against drugs baron Derek Robinson. He was, though, a drug smuggler himself and was having an affair with his boss's wife. In tracing the killer the team is much aided by the hypnotherapist treating Brian's insomnia and they also learn that UCOS will not be terminated to save money.

When keeper Zac Halsey's corpse was found in the tiger enclosure at Harefield Zoo in 2006, the assumption was that he had been mauled to death, but blood found during the refurbishment of his flat now suggests that he was murdered and his body dumped in the compound. He had recently been to Spain where the knife that killed him was purchased. An animal rights campaigner, sacked security guard and a couple with whom Zac enjoyed extreme sports, are all suspects and all seemed to have been in the zoo the night Zac died. Jack works out the killer's identity even though it...