On the box: New Tricks | Secrets Of The Pop Song | Stolen

BACK for an eighth series of codgery crimebustin', New Tricks found itself in London's Natural History Museum and couldn't resist an opening gag about fossils that was even more signposted than "Dinosaurs this way". But there was a sub-text to the joke and it went something like this…

"We know, BBC, that you much prefer trendy, edgy, arty crime dramas such as The Shadow Line and star vehicles like Luther, and we know you merely tolerate us. We know that when the script requires one of us to run after a bad guy, the emails fly round Television Centre urging everyone to watch because it'll be oh so funny.

"Well, if we catch anyone trying to pass Harry Hill a clip to show on You've Been Framed! alongside grannies falling into wedding cakes, we'll be round to claim the 250 quid which is rightfully ours.

Meanwhile, look at our worldwide sales. Look at how even our repeats are better watched than the trendy, edgy, poncey stuff which only ever gets one series. Secretly, you must be delighted!"

And maybe the BBC are, but in the Radio Times last week there wasn't much in the way of demur from Dennis Waterman, Alun Armstrong and James Bolam when it was put to them that the success of New Tricks had caused the Corporation some embarrassment.

This is an oddity for sure: the gentlest of shows, provoking the fiercest of reactions. "I can't watch it," admitted a colleague in this office. "I've never seen it but I just know it'd make me feel… old."

Certainly the New Tricks boys use phrases like "Okey-dokey!"

and "Gordon Bennett!" They sport thick overcoats all the time, even indoors, and Armstrong keeps his woolly scarf tightly knotted. Waterman would probably like to think of himself as the sprightliest, and the only one remotely interested in bored housewives who're "well up for it", but even he, while on stakeout duty, can't stop himself yawning.

But when Armstrong, who probably wears trainers because of bunions, was the one nominated to apprehend a much younger man suspected of murdering a palaeontologist, I didn't want to see the old goat try and break into an amble. Wisely, he decided to fell the suspect with a bag, flung with lawn-bowl accuracy.

That's not quite the same as saying I turned into a fan, however, although it was fun spotting the guest turns, who included Natasha Little (expert at "well up for it"), ponytailed Max from Capital City (now bald) and, in his last TV job before his death in April, Trevor Bannister – Mr Lucas in Are You Being Served? That Young Mr Grace was pretty ancient. Watch the New Tricks boys outlast him.

Secrets Of The Pop Song is a fab little series although my heart sank at the start of the second edition when Sting theorised about "the pop canon".

But great nuggets soon followed. Ace Motown choonsmith Lamont Dozier – 78 Top Tens to his name – revealed how "Sugar pie, honey bunch" at the beginning of I Can't Help Myself was his grandpa's flirtatious greeting to the ladies at his gran's home beauty parlour.

Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus had a rule that five hooks per song were needed for a hit. And the Rolling Stones used to write all their songs jamming to Beatles tracks.

The last came from producer Mark Ronson, who was resident choonsmith Guy Chambers' collaborator for the creation of a breakthrough single.

"Man of the moment ... Prince of Cool," went the overcooked voiceover, but Ronson failed to recognise Chambers (five No 1s for Robbie Williams) on arriving at his studio. At least "the Phil Spector of his generation" hadn't packed a gun. As before, the process was fascinating.

And as before, the resultant song was slightly underwhelming. Brian Higgins of the hit factory Xenomania remarked that too many these days are written from the perspective of the nightclub and, right enough, the lyrics of the Chambers/Ronson track, penned by the latter's protg Tawiah, mentioned a vodka, lime and soda.

The record pluggers didn't like it, not even with the label's last-minute sexing up of the chorus. The record industry may be dying but hits are still elusive, proving that old Lamont Dozier is even more of a genius than we first thought.

I still miss Damian Lewis's quirky, kumquat-nibbling detective in Life, cancelled after one season.

In Stolen his tec was more glum, which was necessitated by the subject – child trafficking – and this one-off was stylishly filmed but strangely flat and slow-moving, which was presumably intentional as well, to make the most shocking moments even more so.

The worst wasn't so much the random stabbing of Georgie from eastern Europe but the scene shortly before when he lay sobbing in a busy street and no one went to his aid.

NEW TRICKS

BBC1 Monday, 9pm

SECRETS OF THE POP SONG

BBC2 Saturday, 9.45pm

STOLEN

BBC1 Sunday, 9pm

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 10 July, 2011