Series original run was on the Beeb beginning in 2002. Think of it like "Cold Case", but cooler and more fun, and not just for the Brit accents.
Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman) is on the promotion fast-track until a raid goes amiss and she shoots a dog. Suddenly she is shunted onto the dead siding and put in command of a newly commissioned unit at the Met. She will head a team of retired Detectives in re-examining old cases...ones which like her career are still open but cold and dead. She winds up with her former immediate superior ex-DCS Jack Halford (James Bolam), Asperger's poster boy ex-DI Brian (Memory) Lane (Alun Armstrong) and thrice divorced ex-DS Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman) rounding out her team. And these old guys have a lot of baggage.
Halford is mourning the unsolved murder of her dear wife Mary, Lane is a recovering alky who was forced into retirement because he botched a case due to drink, but is (mostly) supported by his wife Esther (Susan Jameson, real-life wife of Bolam), and Standing is a throwback to punch-them-first police tactics of the '70s with his daughters and ex-wives (three of each) lurking in the wings.
The show proved so popular during it's run on BBC-One that it outlasted it's cast with a full turnover happening by the tenth season. Some PBS stations reaired the show shortly after each season ended, so I was able to watch a lot of the original cast's episodes...but not all.
The chemistry between the original cast members was a large part of the shows success.
