Wednesday, October 2, 2013
New Tricks, series 10 finale, BBC One, review
Back in July when New Tricks kicked off its tenth series with a golden oldie sunshine holiday in Gibraltar, the hoary old copper caper still retained three of its original gang of four. Ten episodes on there's just one man standing; good ol' cockney grump Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman). Yet already it feels like exactly the same old cosy, good humoured, heart warming hokum.
Not many series could survive a 75 per cent hit on a cast that's built up a hugely (if at times inexplicably) loyal following over the years, regularly getting audiences in excess of 8 million. So credit must be given for the seamlessness of the transition. Some work had already been done. James Bolam's mercurial widower Jack Halford gave way last year to Denis Lawson's more gregarious Scot, Steve McAndrew. And this season's pre-publicity focused almost exclusively on the fact that Alun Armstrong and Amanda Redman were handing in their cards, too.
No surprises, then, when Armstrong's master cogitator Brian "Memory" Lane was replaced by another human computer Dan Griffin (Nicholas Lyndhurst) in episode five. Or when Amanda Redman's blonde decisive UCOS boss Sandra Pullman was supplanted by blonde decisive Tamzin Outhwaite as DCI Sasha Miller last week. Admittedly, Outhwaite's introduction challenged credibility even by New Tricks standards. A well-connected fortysomething kidnap specialist "promoted" into managing three old windbags at UCOS, whose first case focused on a murder on an allotment? Hardly. But the simplistic storyline allowed more focus on her background, and in an hour that saw her happy home life suddenly crumble our sympathies for her character were crudely secured.
The real bedding in was done in tonight's season finale, which was wholly devoted to testing the newbie UCOS boss's mettle. In fact, looking back, it's hard to recall what any of the other cast members did. Given 24 hours to investigate whether a former senior detective had "fitted up" a notorious gangster for murder, DCI Miller went at it all guns blazing. "Why've they given us this case?" whinged Standing. "It's not old and it's not closed."
A good point, to which the only logical answer is that the series' producers needed something meatier than usual to big up the new boss. And so it proved, as Miller embarked on a tortuous quest to prove that a nasty piece of work was innocent of the murder he'd been convicted of, even though he didn't want it and readily admitted other murders including (sob!) that of Miller's former Met partner.
All of which was a little less morally black and white than we're used to, and a little more satisfying too. And it opened up interesting possibilities as to where the series might go next. Of course, the viewing figures will ultimately decide how well New Tricks has survived the changing of the old guard. But already it feels as if it's had a shot in the arm, and all the fresh blood tranfused into its veins is giving this old dog a welcome new lease of life.
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568414/s/31f11347/sc/38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Ctvandradio0C10A3474230CNew0ETricks0Eseries0E10A0Efinale0EBBC0EOne0Ereview0Bhtml/story01.htm
