New Tricks: Season 3

DS Pullman decides to reopen one of her old cases involving the death of Nancy Murray in a car crash. Pullman is convinced that Nancy's husband, Stephen, introduced a mechanical fault and was out to get his wife because of an alleged affair she was having. Jack thinks the threats must have come from another woman, while Gerry thinks that she died for a simple reason: she was a woman driver. The team learns that Nancy was seeing a male prostitute twice weekly, and blackmail becomes a real possibility. The solution to the murder, however, is to be found by examining basic human needs and emotions.

With the recent release of Cabinet papers under the 30-year rule, Jack pushes to reopen the investigation into the death of Joe Walsh, a left-wing union leader. His body was fished out of the Thames in the mid 1970s and his death put down to suicide, but it was clear that the Cabinet wanted his antics stopped, and Jack wonders if someone might have taken those wishes a little too seriously. There were rumors that Walsh had fiddled the union books, and several of his contemporaries are convinced he was disposed of by MI5. Meanwhile, Brian decides to stop taking his medication, with expected results.

The team lose a game of hot potato with a serial killer case. In the late 70s several dogs were murdered around Hampstead Heath, and the public outcry made the case a "total bloody nightmare"; now the killings have begun again.

The vicious criminal Chopper Hadley, who has been back in the country for a week, is searched for by the team. However, Halford is viciously intimidated and the squad start to realise the full danger of their target. Desperate measures are used and Brian is sent undercover to get Hadley once and for all.

A young woman insists that the suspicious death of a local librarian was because of witchcraft, and the team are drawn into the world of magic and the supernatural. A series of strange events occur, and they are put under increasing pressure. The squad become convinced that the supernatural exists and struggle to remain cynical.

When one of Gerry's informants returns to England and provides him with new evidence, the team re-open the case of a 1987 bank robbery where one of the bank employees was killed. The prime suspect was always Ray Cook, but the police could never get the evidence to charge him. Cook's alibi has always been that he was with his dying mother at the time of the robbery but the team find evidence that brings their basic premise into question. They also determine that the bank robbers may have had inside help, including that of certain police officers.

The team are on the case of the ice cream bandit, an armed robber whose targets were the ice cream vans of two feuding ice cream manufacturers in the mid 1990s. The battle between the two families erupts into violence, so UCOS decide to track down the bandit and stop the conflict once and for all.

Luke Hanson has recently been released from jail after serving 8 years for setting a fire at his local school in which the caretaker had been severely injured. He was across the country committing another crime at the time and would like the team to reopen the case. This was Jack's last case before retiring to care for his wife, who was the victim of a hit and run driver. Supt. Pullman gets an offer of promotion that she is finding very hard to resist, but it would mean leaving the squad. A woman who claims to be his daughter approaches Gerry, and Brian rekindles an interest in war gaming. In the course of investigating the school fire, Jack learns the identity of the hit-and-run driver and decides to take action.