Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Larry Lamb, Denis Lawson, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Tamzin Outhwaite, Anthony Calf, Mark Frost, Tracy Ann Oberman, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Amerjit Deu, Matthew Steer, Ella Kenion, Geoff Leesley, Peter Vollebreght, Harry Lister Smith.
The most despicable act of murder meets the most despicable act on the sporting field in the latest of episode of New Tricks, Prodigal Sons, and the fall out in the investigation is not pretty.
Cricket is much more than a past-time, it is a way in which an Englishman can measure time and as famously put by Dennis Norden, if played and taken seriously, a man can get all the way to October before he realises his wife left him in May. However murder is a different matter and when it involves cheating on a grander scale that is normal with anybody, it is time to call it over.
The U.C.O.S. team are called in to investigate the death of a young cricketing hero by a father who has never believed that his son’s death was anything but murder and as the investigation takes several turns, the boundary between decency and what passes for a gentle sport becomes blurred and shameful.
Murder is a dangerous game; some would believe that cheating at the great game is even worse; one may be understandable given the right circumstances, the other absolutely never. It is though a murder to which really takes a bit of a back seat as the various U.C.O.S. member’s private lives start to trickle and bleed through into their day jobs.
Where New Tricks has always succeeded is by its very inclusiveness and willing to tackle issues that might not have been seen before in the same genre of television, whether it is in the realms of mental health or systematic abuse within the police force, the writers have striven to show that people still have lives after retirement. By showing that Larry Lamb’s character Ted Case’s alluded partner Pat is actually a man, not only breaks new ground for the programme but also showed just how far ahead of the game the series is and it was a revelation that should and must be applauded on main stream television.
Nobody truly knows their Prodigal Sons and everybody has the secret that they keep from even the closest of family members, it is how we accept them for who they are, warts and all, which makes the life they lead one that can be talked about.
Ian D. Hall