Around Town: Finding ‘New Tricks’ to share time
Despite the breadth and depth of content on the TV/Internet, it can be daunting to find a show to watch together.
If you are home with toddlers, stop reading now. You don’t have time to read the paper or watch TV, although YouTube does have good, on-demand content on food prepping, yoga and raising twins.
If you have free time, consider this: What if your husband likes football, but hates “Househunters International.” What if you like “Jane the Virgin,” a show he detests? Or he likes Stallone and you like “Orphan Black”?
Welcome to my world. We both like Robert de Niro, but we’ve watched all of his movies at least thrice.
What can we do? Some folks engage in the adult equivalent of parallel play. If you have little kids, you know that children will sit next to each other, playing separately, but aware of the other and very interested in the other kid.
Thanks to the Internet, many adults engage in parallel play. They sit side-by-side at home, earphones in place, watching separate movies on separate laptops.
Go to any airport lounges in America. You’ll see travelers staring at their cellphones, playing video games and texting. They rarely interact. Parallel play.
The problem is this: parallel movies aren’t as much fun as sharing popcorn while you watch a nailbiter together.
The solution is to find a show on Netflix or Hulu that you both like. We click through show after show, looking for “the one.” Once found, we dole the show out, one episode at a time, until the series is over. Then, alas, the search begins again. Back to square one.
We recently hit pay dirt. Our friends, Christy and Thom, told us about this cool British show called “New Tricks,” where retired police detectives come back to work as civilian employees, under the supervision of a female detective superintendent. Their goal: the investigation and reinvestigation of cold cases, mostly murders.
“New Tricks” has everything: Old people. Computer geeks. Unsolved murders in the British style — graphic, but not too graphic — and actors with wrinkles. No Botox.
In the show, the retired cops are led by Detective Supt. Sandra Pullman, played by Amanda Redman. She’s attractive but not always glamorous, because the British make room for good actors, even as they age.
Alun Armstrong plays retired inspector Brian Lane, known as “Memory Lane,” for his ability to recall minutiae and inability to distinguish the chaff. He’s a nerd, a war gamer, a little weird and he solves most of their cases. James Bolam plays ex-Chief Supt. Jack Halford, a reasonable leader, haunted by the murder of his own wife. Dennis Waterman plays Gerry Standing, a retired detective sergeant, an aging ladies man, always on good terms with all three of his ex-wives.
The good news is that “New Tricks” first aired in 2003, and ran continuously for 12 years. There are dozens of episodes. It’s like winning the lottery, which I didn’t, but it feels that way. Months from now, we’ll be on the search again, but for now, problem solved!
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ANITA SUSAN BRENNER is a longtime La Cañada Flintridge resident and an attorney with Law Offices of Torres and Brenner in Pasadena. Follow her on Instagram @realanitabrenner, Facebook and on Twitter @anitabrenner.