New Tricks
television series
New Tricks is a British television police procedural comedy drama, created by Nigel McCrery and Roy Mitchell, produced primarily by Wall to Wall (until its final year, when it was handled by Headstrong Pictures), and broadcast on BBC One. The programme originally began with a pilot episode on 27 March 2003, before a full series was commissioned for 1 April 2004; New Tricks concluded after twelve series on 6 October 2015.
The show had an ensemble cast, of which Dennis Waterman was the only constant over all twelve series; the cast variously included Alun Armstrong, James Bolam, Amanda Redman, Denis Lawson, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Tamzin Outhwaite, and Larry Lamb. Waterman, who was known as a vocalist alongside his acting work, additionally sang the show's theme song.
The series focuses on the work of the Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (UCOS) – a fictional division within London's Metropolitan Police tasked with re-investigating unsolved crimes. UCOS primarily functioned with a senior police detective overseeing the work of three retired police officers who would handle each case, and who could bring in police support when needed. Each episode focuses on a different investigation, with characters often coping with problems related to their age but using their wisdom to overcome hurdles in the original investigation of cold cases. McCrery and Mitchell devised the title of the programme around the proverb "you can't teach an old dog new tricks".
Series
New Tricks began as a one-off episode broadcast on 27 March 2003. This attracted sufficient viewers for the BBC to commission a series of six episodes, which began on 1 April 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “New Tricks” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.