While the quality of New Tricks started to take massive hits from season 8 onwards, London Underground proves that even during its final years, the old dogs still had enough bite to provide some really strong and compelling television.
If you were to ask my opinion on what the best episode featuring the B-team was, this is where I'd direct you because while series 11 had some very dull episodes, the majority of its cases featured a fresh, exciting and very compelling sense of gravitas that made the twists and turns feel exciting and impactful in a way we haven't seen since the show's very early days; I'm talking series 3 here.
London Underground not only features a very exciting, immensely compelling plot that perfectly blends an 'out there' supernatural mystery with a grounded, believable case of obsession and superstition, it also presents a beautifully realised character arc alongside it involving Sasha standing up to her cheating ex-husband and her inability to forgive him as they're forced to work together to solve the case. The reason all this works so well is because they're not completely separate parts of the puzzle. Just like in the show's glory days, the cases are intertwined with compelling character work which was always what made New Tricks stand out among the river of generic, tedious, 'copy/paste' crime dramas that riddled the TV schedules.
With a few exceptions, New Tricks had for the most part lost sight of this quality over the past 4 years, and would unfortunately lose sight of it again after this. Simply, it's very refreshing to see the writers take the opportunity to provide a compelling character arc for a character that still feels incredibly underdeveloped. It's written beautifully too with a thrilling sense of back and forth between Sasha and Ned and an incredible satisfaction derived from seeing Sasha put the loathsome cheat in his place. I still think Strickland steals the show however by standing up to Ned for UCOS and Sasha, before putting Sasha back in her place like an absolute boss. It's one of my favourite Strickland moments and a fantastic scene.
The episode is also full of really exciting, some of which just leap off the screen. It makes an excellent change from the thin, generic character-tropes normally seen in the genre, and indeed most of New Tricks' last cases. Here however, the cast of superstitious, obsessive artists and their quirky personalities, wonderfully portrayed by all involved, liven up the narrative and make the case just that little bit more compelling.
The case itself is fascinating with the incomplete film clips being the key to solving two murders with a sea of superstition and confusion surrounding the whole case, and a list of suspects believing that a subterranean river is running the city and their lives, it's just fantastic. I'd go as far as to say inspired which isn't a word I use lightly.
On a final note, I think the location filming around London deserves a mention. How the production team on this episode were able to book out and film in such huge locations is beyond me, and the visit to the London sewers was a fantastic decision that adds great atmosphere to the episode. It's probably one of the show's most ambitious episodes in terms of location-work (if you don't count travelling to Gibraltar last season), and the shots are choreographed to take full advantage of the setting. It's very well directed and the editing of the episode keeps the narrative and pace steadily ramping up to the conclusion. Just ignore the awful visual effect on the laptop at the end.
London Underground is one of New Tricks' strongest episodes, especially of its later years, and one that proves that had the writing team been putting this much effort into the show on a weekly basis, the show might've had a future beyond Waterman's impending departure.
