Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman and her unconventional team of ex-detectives are back on BBC One for a ninth series of New Tricks.
> Buy the Series 9 boxset on Amazon.
Episode 1
Monday 27th August 2012, 9pm
Jack Halford’s behaviour – secret calls, personal appointments and an obsession over an outstanding case – is causing the team some concern. But nothing can prepare them for the bombshell he’s about to drop. Halford is quitting UCOS.
But any thoughts that Pullman, Lane and Standing have about probing his motives and persuading him to change his mind are sidelined by the arrival of shadowy Whitehall Intelligence figure Stephen Fisher, who demands they turn their full attention to what appears to be a pointless reinvestigation into a 100-year-old murder.
With any potential witnesses and leads dead, cases don’t come much colder than this one, but with Fisher breathing down their necks the team try to retrace the victim Abigail Padua’s steps through the streets of Victorian London.
Grateful that his colleagues are distracted by Fisher and his case, Jack privately continues to make plans for his departure, but the team are extremely unsettled. Sandra faces the prospect of losing her mentor and the man who has become a father figure and Brian and Gerry are determined not to let him go without a fight.
As Brian finally discovers the truth behind Jack’s decision to go, is it too late to persuade him to stay? And given Brian’s fragile state of mind, will the promise Jack asks him to make be too big a burden for him to bear?
Episode 2
Monday 3rd September 2012, 9pm
The UCOS team reinvestigate the disappearance of PE teacher Jason Bowe after the remains of a body are discovered on the perimeter of the elite public boarding school where he taught.
The investigation couldn’t have come at a worse time for the school, which is preparing to welcome a former pupil, the Rt Hon Geoffrey Parkes MP, for the opening of a new computer centre.
Twenty-five year old Bowe went missing from Peregrine Manor School on the last day of term in June 2007. His disappearance didn’t greatly concern the head teacher Elizabeth Clayton, who saw it as a typical of the lack of commitment displayed by young teachers who move jobs regularly.
The team sense a certain amount of reluctance from the staff to cooperate with their enquiries until they speak to home support worker Helen Hadley, who not only sheds light on Bowe’s time at the school but is also the only person to show any compassion towards him.
Something of a loner as far as his colleagues were concerned, Bowe appears to have got on better with his students, forming close and often inappropriate relationships with several. But could his behaviour have rattled someone enough to kill him?
Episode 3
Monday 10th September 2012, 9pm
UCOS reinvestigate the suspected suicide of young Foreign Office diplomat Annabel Tilson, who had suffered both a miscarriage the week before her body was found in a frozen London lake and a professional fall from grace, when a government laptop was stolen from her home.
Her profoundly deaf fiancé Eddie and twin sister Minnie believe her death was connected to sensitive information held on the missing computer and blame her FCO boss Peter Hammond for her downfall.
After clashing with Hammond, Pullman warms to the conspiracy theory idea and decides to ignore DAC Strickland’s advice to tread carefully, in order to explore a possible cover up at the Foreign Office. Meanwhile, smitten with Eddie’s interpreter Vera, Gerry decides to learn sign language, with mixed results.
Episode 4
Monday 17th September 2012, 9pm
The UCOS team’s feathers are ruffled with the arrival of Steve McAndrew, a retired detective from Glasgow. Brought in to help reinvestigate one of his original cases, McAndrew’s policing methods – and personal agenda – certainly raise a few eyebrows.
Seventeen-year-old Georgia Wright went missing in Scotland in 2003 and at the time of the original investigation was presumed dead, a conclusion that neither McAndrew nor Georgia’s family ever accepted and have been haunted by since.
When Georgia’s DNA is found at the scene of a robbery at a petrol station in Clapham proving she is still alive, it is clear that this case is very personal for McAndrew and he is determined to find her with or without the team’s help. But as the team adjust to McAndrew’s approach to the job, they also learn a few tricks from him.
Episode 5
Monday 24th September 2012, 9pm
When the body of missing computer expert Martin Longthorn turns up in the morgue of a teaching hospital under a false name, Strickland asks the team to look into the case. Martin worked for the Metropolitan Police and his disappearance caused concern at the time. However, it now appears that Martin died of natural causes, so why was his body hidden – and by whom?
Catherine Green, who went on a blind date with Longthorn the evening he disappeared, tells the team that he left to go to a mysterious work meeting that night. With access to sensitive police information, including the names of undercover officers, and the revelation that Longthorn was in contact with a number of online hackers known as The Roguenet Group, the team are concerned that operations may have been compromised.
Meanwhile, Lane finds it difficult to accept McAndrew as the new UCOS team member and Esther is forced to intervene.
Episode 6
Monday 1st October 2012, 9pm
Two years ago, 16-year-old tennis champion Alice Kemp fell to her death from the balcony of a penthouse apartment after losing a crucial match to great rival Fawn Bramall. Did Alice jump, or was she pushed?
Alice’s mother Victoria seems convinced that her daughter committed suicide, but when UCOS delve deeper into Alice’s world they soon discover several people with motives for her murder, including her coach Nick Hoyle and her agent Anthony Marshall.
McAndrew points out that those with the most to gain were Fawn Bramall and her pushy mother Irina, but it proves impossible to get any information from the shy and subdued Fawn. However, when Pullman realises that Fawn was not in fact Alice’s enemy but her best friend, the truth about Alice’s life and death starts to emerge. Meanwhile, Standing wonders if he did enough to encourage his own daughter’s sporting ambitions and Lane hatches a plan to turn Scampy into a film star.
Episode 7
Monday 8th October 2012, 9pm
UCOS re-open the case of Sean Docherty, a talented young poet whose burnt body was discovered ten years ago in the scrapyard of a known gangster.
While Standing is convinced that the murder is related to Docherty’s criminal connections, Lane is sure that the answer lies in his poetry.
Episode 8
Monday 15th October 2012, 9pm
UCOS investigate the murder of Max Klein, an East German immigrant whose mysterious last words translated as ‘blue flower’. As the team piece together Max’s remarkable story, Pullman attempts to gain the trust of his estranged daughter Mia.
Episode 10
Monday 22nd October 2012, 9pm
When someone tries to assassinate Stephen Fisher, Strickland calls the UCOS team together asking for their help.
Thirty years ago, when he and Fisher were at Sandhurst together, they were involved in a covert operation on behalf of the security service. A team was assembled to break into the house of a journalist, Simon Bisley, who was believed to have information on IRA arms deals.
With Bisley killed in a hit and run accident shortly after the operation, another member of the team found dead days ago and Fisher now targeted, Strickland believes that someone is out to kill all the original team. But when a connection is made to known gangster Carl Dillon, and MI5, Strickland and Fisher realise the threat may be coming from within the security service itself.
Episode 9
Monday 29th October 2012, 9pm
Standing and McAndrew travel to Glasgow, where a new UCOS section is being established. While there, they agree to help investigate the unsolved murder of a bookie called James Soutar, and the case brings McAndrew face-to-face with an old adversary.