On DVD: New Tricks Series 4 & 5
New Tricks, the hugely successful U.K. crime drama laced with humor, has been going strong since the 2004 airing of its pilot episode. The series follows UCOS (Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad), a division of the Metropolitan Police Service. Led by Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman, the squad is comprised of retired police officers who no longer have to do things “by the book.” Not exactly, anyway.
Acorn Media Group released Series 4 on DVD June 7, 2011, and Series 5 September 27, 2011. Each slipcased 3-DVD set features eight episodes.
Series 4 starts with “Casualty,” which finds all the members of the team in hospital where—coincidentally—three patients die on the same night. “Casualty” is followed by: “God’s Waiting Room” (a suspicious death in a nursing home); “Ducking and Diving” (the dumping of a security vehicle at the bottom of a lake leads to the investigation of a 17-year-old murder); “Nine Lives” (old woman leaves fortune to her cats); “Powerhouse” (the investigation of a 1950s case—a murder at a power station); “Buried Treasure”; “Father’s Pride” (a 1987 unsolved murder is investigated after the discovery of an old camera and film); and “Big Topped” (a circus story that involves spontaneous combustion—a difficult act to repeat).
Throughout the episodes, bits and pieces of the squad members’ (Redman, Dennis Waterman, Alun Armstrong, and James Bolam) lives are revealed, along with incidents from their past and the relationship they share.
"Spare Parts" kicks off Series Five with a story about a dodgy organ-donor operation; then: "Final Curtain" (in 1992 a husband and wife team appearing in “Death at the Masked Ball” were separated when she shot him dead on stage); "A Face For Radio" (a DJ is killed in an attack on a radio station); "Loyalties and Royalties" (the death of a 1970s rock band’s lead guitarist); "Couldn't Organise One" (death and a brewery); "Magic Majestic" (magic and murder); "Communal Living" (death on campus); and “Mad Dogs” (the military, influenza research, and a murdered soldier).
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