In my review of last week’s New Tricks I complained that not much had been done to set up Sandra’s exit as tonight’s instalment would be Amanda Redman’s final appearance. I did however theorise that the introduction of War Crimes Inspector Max Clement. While Clement’s continued presence in the episode was a large contributing factor to Sandra’s departure, a lot of her decision was due to the fact that she finally got closure on a case that has haunted her for the majority of her career.
The case in question relates to the 1985 murder of young art student Joanna Beck who was last seen entering a park to meet a woman who’d commissioned her to paint picture of her. Around the same time, a lot of other students reported that they’d been approached by a jogger who attempted to coerce them into joining him. Sandra always believed that the jogger had abducted and murdered Joanna, as well as a string of other girls, but at the time she’d never been able to prove it. The case is reopened when a photo is found of Lesley Hewitt, a 19 year old music student who went missing in 1996, who is walking through the same park. As the mystery jogger appears in the picture, Sandra is keen to link the two cases however Strickland simply wants her to focus on Lesley’s disappearance. Sandra soon finds another link between the two women when Lesley’s sister informs her of the fact that her sister had recently been given her first bit of paid work. As Lesley’s sister tells her about the woman who organised the concert, Sandra is convinced that it’s the same woman who lured Joanna Beck to the fictitious portrait painting. Meanwhile Gerry and Danny go to visit Stuart McElvey, the other man in the picture of Lesley, who can’t remember being in the park on the day. However, he does inform the duo that he thought he saw a blue transit van parked outside the park, with the team feeling Stuart might be making things up.
With only the pictures to go on, the team decide to track down the photographer Greg Bishop who they discover is sleeping rough. The male members of the UCOS team spend their night trawling through the homeless community in an attempt to find Bishop. They eventually track him down to an abandoned house where they find him dead from an overdose. However, they also find pictures relating to all of the girls that have gone missing or the ones that have been found dead. As Sandra now has her connection, she is desperate to finally bring the killer to justice. But Strickland informs her that cracking eleven murder cases is too much for four people and tells her to move the boards upstairs. Though she initially complies with Strickland’s orders, Sandra decides to follow up another lead as she recognises a face from one of the pornographic shoots that Bishop carried out. The face belonged to Annie Banks, a former friend of Joanne’s who was questioned during the first murder investigation. Annie’s sarcastic nature and droll answers to Sandra’s questions makes her incredibly frustrated. Further evidence proves that Annie did in fact have a hand in some of the abduction, but when Sandra brings Annie in for questioning she is scolded by Strickland. He informs her that she shouldn’t be working the case as he’d already handed up to MIT, before telling her to crack on with the next case. He’s surprised then when she tells him that the serial killer case will be her last for UCOS.
This is due to the fact that, over several meetings with Max, Sandra has realised that she needs to move on from UCOS. As she discusses how this case brings her career full circle, Max suggests how she could come and work with the War Crimes department as he needs a new investigator. Sandra is still unsure at first and worries how the boys will cope without her; it’s only after a visit from Jack’s ghost that she starts to realise that the team don’t need her any more. However, it appears as if Gerry will miss Sandra the most as he is now the only member of the original crew left standing.
As somebody who’s only just started watching New Tricks on a regular basis I’m not quite if Sandra’s send-off is fitting for a character of her stature. At the same time, I felt everything that happened made sense and Julian Simpson’s script gave you the feeling that Sandra needed new challenges in her life. The reopening of the Joanna Beck case made sense and provided a suitable denouement for Sandra, who finally got to confront the man that had haunted her for almost thirty years. Dramatic license was slightly stretched in terms of Sandra’s new appointment, as I’m not sure why Max would offer Sandra a job after only a couple of weeks of knowing her. I’m sure Sandra would’ve needed some sort of official interview before she took up this new role, but here it seemed like Max could just hire whoever he wanted on his team. As the focus was on Sandra here, the other three characters were a little lost in the shuffle although Gerry did get a cute little scene with Sandra towards the end of the episode.
Obviously this was Amanda Redman’s episode and she was great from beginning to end. Redman was in full force here as Sandra crusaded to get the Joanna Beck case reopened and later seemed crushed when it was moved upstairs. Redman was also brilliant during the scenes in which she had to flirt with the exotic Max and that may well explain how she was able to get the job. Aside from Redman, the most memorable performance came from Phoebe Nicholls as the emotionally vacant Annie Banks. The scenes in the interrogation room involving Redman and Nicholls were absolutely enthralling to watch and provided some of the best New Tricks moments of the series. As this was Redman’s last stand, you could see her male colleagues were getting a bit emotional at the prospect of her departure and this is why the scene between Gerry and Sandra felt so poignant. You could see in this scene that Dennis Waterman will miss Redman as he finds himself as the only surviving member of the original UCOS team.
After last week’s poor episode, it’s great to see New Tricks on form once again as it delivered a find send-off for Amanda Redman and Sandra. The central case was a compelling one and the emotional involvement of Sandra made me more intrigued to find out who the killer was. The performances from both Redman and Phoebe Nicholls were superb while there was a real tinge of sadness to the final scenes. I feel that Redman really proved her worth here and it’ll be interesting to see how new girl Tamzin Outhwaite fares when she takes over next week.
What did you think to tonight’s episode of New Tricks? Did you feel that Sandra got a decent send-off?
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