2006-02-10
Dear me! How did I miss this gem for so long? (Probably because I don’t watch much television – apart from sport). The last three weeks I’ve been enthralled by something called ‘Judge John Deed’. I think it’s actually been running for a few years now and may have reached other parts of the world. It’s one of those shows where your jar drops in disbelief at how preposterous the story is. It’s SO bad, it’s brilliant!First of all you have Martin Shaw (once of the 70’s Police show ‘The Professionals’) putting on a silly pantomime deep voice and pretending to be a judge. As an actor he’s always been one of those people who is so far up his own backside that he sits on a brush to clean his shoes, but in this he’s exceptionally wooden. And then you have the equally solid Jenny Seagrove playing a barrister who is his on-off lover.
But the plots are what makes it really special – full of things that just would never happen in a real court of law and with a ridiculously low number of people populating the world. His ex-wife is a barrister too, so is his daughter and would you believe it (NO!) the two of them pop up, alongside his ex-girlfriend (Seagrove) prosecuting or defending! Like that would be allowed! Wouldn’t there be the smallest shred of conflict of interest here?
Now Deed is supposedly a maverick – comes to some contentious decisions and allows some things to happen in his court that you wouldn’t normally expect. And that brings him to the attention of the government – especially as the cases he hears all appear to have some dodgy implication for the powers-that-be (MI5 flit in and out of the public gallery). “Deeds on that case” “Oh dear! I’ll alert the cabinet!” But astonishingly we find that his ex-wife is now shacked up with the Home Secretary no less! Which allows a drunken John Deed to frequently turn up and interrupt dinner parties of the great and good to harangue the politician about changing laws and such like.
Now ex-girlfriend (Seagrove – still keeping up?) has taken up with a new boyfriend – a doctor who coincidentally (oh the coincidences seem to cause these people no bother) is frequently called on to give medical evidence in cases heard by Deed. They don’t like each other of course, and frown a lot. Deed also has another girlfriend – another Judge who also has to hear cases where Seagrove is the barrister. They don’t like each other too…and strangely they have a habit of turning up at his flat at almost exactly the same time, every week and stand in his doorway either in a state of undress or shout at him and get indignant (there’s usually a scene where they apologise to him and tell him he was right about everything all along.
But last night’s was the best of the three I’ve seen yet! Deed ended up on the jury!! What the fuck??!! And then he decides to go out and commission his own expert witnesses, and has a chat with the judge (yes! His girlfriend – another coincidence) and after some jiggery-pokery involving getting Seagrove to turn up at the Judge’s office and tell her to allow the trial to be reopened to hear Deed’s new witness (ooh! she didn’t like that!) he ends up cross-examining people as a juror!! I mean come on! Has this ever happened anywhere in the world. The rest of the jury are all characters that have escaped from the Henry Fonda film Twelve Angry Men, but eventually he wins them all round to acquit the defendant. And then we have a scene where Seagrove’s going to tell him she’s leaving the errant doctor and coming back to him, except that she gets there just at the same time as the Judge girlfriend is storming out after some tiff, gets the wrong end of the stick.
Sorry for boring you with all that! But I laughed myself silly – and that’s a good thing isn’t it!