New Tricks (BBC1, 9pm) University Challenge (BBC2, 8pm) Embarrassing Bodies: Teen Special (C4, 9pm)

IT’S hardly rocket science. If you put three of the UK’s best veteran actors together with TV’s finest female performer and give them a half-decent script of investigating old crimes to chomp at, then you’re going to get a ratings winner.

North-East actors Alun Armstrong and James Bolam, plus the irrepressible Dennis Waterman, are retired coppers Brian Lane, Jack Halford and Gerry Standing, who only stop bickering long enough to solve the nearly unsolvable.

Amanda Redman is glam Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman in charge of the Unsolved Crimes and Open Case Squad who, like the three musketeers of unmothballed mirth, likes to ad-lib during each show, adding some rough-edged realism to each plot.

The opener of this eighth series continues the rich vein of the ageing tecs poking fun at themselves as they investigate a death at London’s Natural History Museum – which earns the episode title of Old Fossils.

There is actually a real-life death involved in this episode. Sitcom actor Trevor Bannister returned to the small screen to play suspended pathologist Bob Ruxton, who may have mucked up the inquest on museum paleontologist Dr Bernard Fletcher by suggesting his death was caused by a fall rather than a single blow to the head.

Sadly, Bannister died in April this year as a result of a heart attack while working on his Surrey allotment.