New Tricks (BBC1); The Couple With 27 Children: Extraordinary People (five): Detective Amanda Redman and her old boys are back for more investigations and, despite the "new" in the title, New Tricks is more of the same old, admittedly entertaining, thing.
Working on the theory that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, the series in which a female detective and a trio of old coppers reopen cold cases proceeds as slowly and surely as a policeman on the beat.
Five years after his wife died in a car accident - when she ran smack-bang into the wall of a wine bar - Stephen Murray wants the vehicle back.
The police have always suspected he had something to do with her death as he'd been working on the steering the day she died.
Dennis Waterman's Gerry Standing dismisses the victim as "just another woman driver" but then he would because half the fun of New Tricks is in watching these old codgers display their old-fashioned, un-PC prejudices.
A tattoo on the bottom of a chap in saucy snaps of the dead woman, a headmistress and a sex therapist who holds orgasm seminars were among the clues followed to solve the case.
What makes New Tricks watchable are the performances - the always-excellent Redman backed by Waterman, James Bolam and Alun Armstrong as her elderly helpers.
Looking after them is a bit like taking care of youngsters but nowhere near as taxing as the life of John and Jeanette Murphy who've dedicated their lives to raising America's unwanted children. As well as their four biological children, they're mum and dad to 23 adopted children with a variety of physical and mental handicaps.
Without the Murphys, these kids would have ended up in institutions as the children of crackhead mums, rape victims and prostitutes.
What's remarkable is how easy the Murphys made it look raising so many in their suburban eight-bedroom house in Atlanta, Georgia.
Of course, life is obviously a struggle financially. They depend on welfare as well as coupons and deals at the supermarket. But it works because they believe in everyone helping everyone else, right down to home-schooling.
The children are remarkably well-behaved, surely down to the Murphys' strategy of getting everyone involved no matter how limited their abilities.
The couple attribute their success to their unwavering faith, saying of their brood that "they have a lot to give back to the world, if the world would just see it". Their philosophy is that their children are different not disabled.
They also must face up to the fact that their children are medically fragile and could die. These are parents who've been through 14 open heart surgeries and John, a nurse, performs pacemaker checks over the phone.
"I guess as we go through life these kids are going to fall away, but they would have had a better life than in an institution," says Shaun, the couple's eldest biological son. Seeing the family at home, it was difficult not to agree with his assessment.
Published: 18/04/2006
