List of New Tricks Episodes - Series 8 (2011)

The murder of a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in 2001 opens the new series. The team discovers the victim was a respected but outspoken scientist with a knack for rubbing people up the wrong way – and when it comes out he was strongly opposed to the museum's sponsorship deal with a large fuel company, the ex-cops soon have plenty of suspects.

The team reopens the case of an unidentified vagrant who was murdered on a tube train 15 years ago when the victim's son is discovered as a result of a DNA test.

DNA tests on charred remains found in 1996 lead the team to Home Office fingerprint analyst Anna King, who was brought to the UK from Albania as a child by her brother, David Celaj. Anna was adopted by a British couple, while David went to work as a police interpreter. His last assignment was to translate for a witness in a murder case against a notorious Albanian criminal.

In 2009 market trader Kathy Green died after drinking drugged coffee. The UCOS team suspects, but cannot prove a link with Anthony Gunnell, a man who raped women after doping them with coffee from his refreshment van. They learn that Kathy had an illegitimate daughter who was adopted and whose attempted reconciliation with her mother went badly.

Psychologist Samantha Gerson comes to UCOS to conduct a study of older men in the workplace. She asks the team to investigate the hit-and-run accident that left her brother Darren Gerson with a brain injury and memory loss. Darren was working as a bicycle courier and he believes that he was targeted for a package he was carrying.

Sandra's old flame DCI Larson, head of the Met's arts and antiques squad, asks the team to reinvestigate the murder of antiques dealer Mal Baxter. His death was originally thought to be the result of a burglary gone wrong, but new evidence suggests Baxter was a police informant while conducting underhanded deals.

A woman is sent anonymous emails from someone claiming to know what happened to her husband Phillip Mackenna, a prominent scientist at UCL, working on cold fusion, who disappeared while on a train to Paris. As the team investigates, DAC Strickland receives a warning from Whitehall.

As part of his initiation into a motorbike gang called The Braves, Reece Chapman plans to murder the rival gang member he believes killed his father Eddie, the former leader of The Braves. Desperate to stop Reece, his girlfriend Stephanie Parr turns to UCOS for help in solving Eddie's murder to prove he's targeting the wrong man.

The investigation of the murder of Christopher Collins, who was recognised on a website about unsolved crimes by a former employer, meets a dead end until it is revealed that he was in the witness protection programme. Meanwhile, the team wonder what effect the upcoming cuts to the police force will have on UCOS.

The team reopen the case of zookeeper Zac Halsey, originally thought to have been mauled to death by a tiger, when blood evidence discovered in his lodgings suggests he was killed before he was found in the tiger's enclosure. As the case reaches a conclusion, however, dark secrets plague the UCOS team, and Strickland fears that not all of the ex-coppers are up to the job.