The BEST episodes of Judge John Deed
Every episode of Judge John Deed ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Judge John Deed!
In this BBC drama series, Mr Justice Deed (played by Martin Shaw) is an unusual English High Court judge. An idealistic lawyer from a working-class background, Deed has got near to the top of his profession by his intellect, his charm, and an obsessive belief in justice. Judge Deed wants to uphold the law (and his own independence) at all costs, and this leaves him at odds with a series of British government stooges who try to influence his decisions.Outside court, Deed is a womanizer who has an up-and-down relationship with fellow barrister Jo Mills (played by Jenny Seagrove), and his glamorous ex-wife Georgina Channing (another barrister, played by Caroline Langrishe) is somehow never quite out of his life. He and Georgina have a daughter called Charlie (Louisa Clein), at first a law student, later a young barrister, whose escapades have a way of getting Deed into hot water. Row Colemore (Christopher Cazenove) is a senior Metropolitan Police officer and one of Deed's oldest friends.
#1 - Abuse of Power
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/28/2002
After a young woman is battered to death, the mentally retarded Gary Patterson confesses and the police consider the case solved. However, Gary later withdraws his confession, leaving Judge Deed's court struggling with limited evidence.Meanwhile, Deed is also busy looking into a case about a multi-million pound mortgage fraud and comes up against a masonic conspiracy. The fraud case is due to go before a brother judge who himself proves to be implicated, and who commits suicide. In Deed's own court, the jury finds Gary Patterson not guilty, Deed asks who the killer was, and Gary says he witnessed the killing and knows the answer.
#2 - Everyone's Child
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 12/19/2002
Deed has to give judgement in a court battle between a child and his parents. Jason Powell (who is represented by Jo Mills) has heart disease, and the doctors say his only hope of life is in a heart transplant - but he refuses to agree to the operation. His parents want the court to rule against an interim injunction supporting Jason, who clearly understands the risks he faces and who has a good legal case to decide for himself. His parents, Mel and Andy, plead for the heart transplant, and Deed lifts the injunction... but then Jason dies on the operating table, after spending his last moments pleading with the surgeons not to go against his wishes... Meanwhile, Deed's own life is running no more smoothly. Both he and Jo are accused of serious misconduct when she spends the night in his chambers...
#3 - Appropriate Response
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 12/10/2001
Romero, a serial rapist sentenced by Deed to twelve years imprisonment, is out on parole after serving eight years. As a sex offender, Romero has had a rough time inside and he plans to get even with the Judge who sent him down. After harassing Deed himself, Romero turns his attentions to the judge's daughter Charlie.
#4 - Political Expediency
Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/21/2002
After a call girl is found dead in a skip, an Arab sheikh's chauffeur is charged with killing her, but the evidence points to the sheikh himself being involved in the murder. Unfortunately for Deed, the Arab ruler was in London to place a huge order with a British aircraft manufacturer, and pressure is piled on Deed by the British government, as well as by the sheikh's own. The plot thickens when counsel for the prosecution is also killed and Deed's lover, Jo Mills, takes over the case, and when he hears that Georgina Channing, his former wife, is engaged to marry Neil Haughton, the government minister fighting for the aeroplane order. Before long, witnesses disappear and the jury is being interfered with - by the British Government, no less. And then Deed gets an offer they think he can't refuse, when appointment as an Appeal Court judge is dangled before him.
#5 - Judicial Review
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 12/4/2003
Deed gets angry when a brother judge deals leniently with a man convicted of political offences from whom the judge has had certain favours. He makes an accusation of corruption, despite Jo's misgivings.Meanwhile, Jan Dobbs is in Deed's own court charged with murder, and the hit-and-run case from the previous episode is still not concluded. Of course, the bigwigs of the legal profession are still busy scheming to marginalize both Deed and Jo Mills.
#6 - Conspiracy
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 12/11/2003
Jo Mills leads for the prosecution and Brian Cantwell for the defence when a British member of parliament, Alan Roxborough, is tried on a charge of attempting to murder his boyfriend with a frying pan. As usual, there is a conspiracy in the background to pervert the course of justice, which may be connected to Roxborough's opposition to certain British arms deals.Meanwhile, Deed goes into therapy and has a brief affair with his therapist.
#7 - Duty of Care
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 12/3/2001
Deed presides over the case of a young man's death on a building site, in which the well-connected construction company boss is trying to lay the blame on his employees. Deed's determination to get at the truth is strangely unwelcome to the Lord Chancellor's department. At the same time, Charlie Deed is getting herself into hot water by 'liberating' a dog from a laboratory in the name of animal rights. With the police hot on her trail, Charlie adroitly dumps the dog on Deed and a blackmailer gets to work.
#8 - Health Hazard
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/27/2003
Deed has two difficult new cases in his court. In one, a woman with a brain tumour claims it was caused by using her mobile phone. In another, the defendant in a hit-and-run case seems unfit to stand trial.Meanwhile, in a continuing story-line from the second series, Deed's lover Jo Mills faces a disciplinary tribunal prompted by Sir Ian Rochester and presided over by Sir Monty Everard. Both of them bear grudges against Deed, and he rides to Jo's defence.
#9 - Nobody's Fool
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 12/12/2002
Deed rekindles his old love affair with Francesca Rochester, and at first he fails to notice that she is making use of him in a struggle with her dotty aunt for power over a property and publishing empire. Francesca's husband Ian and another enemy set out to undermine the Judge's credibility, aiming to have him removed from office.In court, Deed is busy presiding over a murder trial in which a young lawyer and his brother and sister are charged with conspiring with a burglar to kill their parents. Meanwhile, the judge's student daughter Charlie has got herself pregnant by a married lecturer at her college. Charlie's mother persuades her to have an abortion, which Deed is against, but he finds out about it too late. We discover that Deed bitterly regrets Jo's decision years before to abort his own child.
#10 - Silent Killer
Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/27/2006
In court, Deed has to judge the case of a couple who are fighting their local council over a police communications mast on the roof of the building they live in. Gilly Bridges has motor-neurone disease, while her husband Jake has stomach cancer, which they claim are connected with the 'tetra' mast. The incidence of both diseases in the Bridges' block of flats is many times the statistical norm. Jo represents Jake and Gilly Bridges, while Deed's former wife George appears for the defendant council. Then Deed receives an application from Rose Hussein, the English wife of a former government minister from Iraq. Rose believes depleted uranium used by the British Army in its tank shells killed her family - and she wants the court to establish the facts. Of course, the government doesn't want the case to be heard.
#11 - Hidden Agenda
Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 12/17/2001
Deed presides over a murder trial. An old man suffering from cancer died from a morphine overdose, and his attractive young woman doctor has been charged with murder, on the accusation of the dead man's niece. The doctor is acquitted, following a patholigist's evidence that the cause of death was beta blockers in the medication building up in the old man's liver, so the increase in dose from 50mg to 200mg had not affected the outcome... But then the doctor comes to Deed and confesses that she intended to kill her patient. When the Lord Chancellor's Department gets wind of this development, they suggest Deed was sleeping with the doctor - but with Jo's help, he is able to neutralize this threst.
#12 - Lost and Found
Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/13/2005
Jo Mills was planning to take time off work, but then she agrees to defend a man who escaped trial sixteen years before after he was charged with attempted murder. Jo is partly attracted to the case because she recognizes two of the detectives who are mixed up in it.
Watch Now:Amazon#13 - Evidence of Harm (2)
Season 6 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/18/2007
Deed delves deeper into why funding for the soldier to sue the pharmaceutical company was withdrawn and makes ever more sinister discoveries. Then the forces of reaction move to stop him.
#14 - Rough Justice
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/26/2001
A charismatic MI5 informer appears in Deed's court charged with battering his wife, and the judge comes under pressure from on high to let him off, as he is an important source of information about 'The Real IRA'. In a second case, three men are accused of using Rohypnol to carry out a date rape, and a pushy young defence counsel rubs the judge up the wrong way.Outside court, Deed flirts with Francesca, a publisher who is married to his antagonist Ian Rochester: their resulting short affair is caught on camera, and a jealous husband is quickly looking for revenge.
#15 - Separation of Powers
Season 4 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/10/2005
Deed has an environmental case before him, in which a company operating a large-scale waste incinerator is accused of damaging people's health by air pollution. Jo Mills represents the parents of a damaged child, but is losing. Then it comes out that the company deliberately hid a fault at the incinerator which made its emissions far worse. Meanwhile, Rufus Barron comes up with evidence to support the claim that Neil Haughton took a bribe on a defence contract. Then the evidence is lost, and Haughton demands that Deed should be impeached for unprofessional conduct.
#16 - Popular Appeal
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/17/2005
An angry contestant in a TV show kills another competitor on camera, and the show's producers face charges of manslaughter in Deed's court. Meanwhile, Deed is pressing for an inquiry into the death of Rufus Barron, a man who had been accused of embezzling money from his employer, the arms dealer Sir Tim Listfield. Sir Tim becomes violent when Deed keeps questioning the 'accident' which killed Barron.
Watch Now:Amazon#17 - One Angry Man
Season 5 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/3/2006
Deed's superiors want him out of the way, and they arrange for him to be called for jury service on a case which will not be over quickly - a murder trial. In court, a teenage nanny from the Ukraine is accused of killing Baby Jonathan by shaking him, which she denies. As a juryman, Deed wants to see more medical evidence. Then he discovers a cross-over with a case of Jo's, in which she has evidence that the effects of the MMR vaccine could have led to Baby Jonathan's death. Meanwhile, Marc Thompson is asked to travel to South Africa, to give evidence about its child vaccination program - and Jo begins to have doubts about marrying him. After quarreling with Marc, she starts to see Deed again. But then she also quarrels with Deed, who still seems to have another woman in his life - one of his fellow judges.
#18 - Lost Youth
Season 5 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/20/2006
Deed has to judge a case concerning Jo's boyfriend, Marc Thompson. Marc wants to take the decision not to resuscitate a two-year old patient at his hospital who has a weak heart and is in a coma, if the child's heart stops again, but the parents disagree. In another case, Deed has to sentence a young thief, and the youth then dies in custody. All this brings back Deed's memories of his own traumatic childhood. He is spoiling for a fight and argues with Jo - who announces that she has decided to marry Marc.
#19 - Economic Imperative
Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/26/2004
The case of Diana Hulsey, a single mother with terminal brain cancer who is suing a telephone company, is concluded in Deed's court. The Establishment dreads a verdict in Diana's favour, and Ian Rochester is yet again out to discredit the judge before he can deliver judgement. Rochester conspires with the phone company to accuse Deed of possessing child pornography, and Deed has to work out what to do when he finds it on his laptop.Meanwhile, Jo faces a conundrum when Diana asks her to look after her seven-year-old son when she is dead, which could be at any moment.
#20 - War Crimes (2)
Season 6 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/11/2007
Continuing the story of a war crimes trial in The Hague. Deed finds the defendant is a victim of the British government's attempts to develop an exit strategy out of the continuing occupation of Iraq by western forces, and he has to balance the interests of justice against the possibility of saving British lives.
#21 - Heart of Darkness
Season 5 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/10/2006
In Deed's court, Jo Mills acts for a mother whose former husband, Paul Robson-Alan, wants their baby to be given the 'MMR' vaccination. Robson-Alan is a British Government health adviser, and the outcome of the case is important to the political credibility of the Health Department. But Paul's ex-wife, Marika, believes the MMR jab is dangerous - and some dramatic new evidence is produced on that. Meanwhile, Jo's wedding to Marc is still on, but she is so busy that she forgets to turn up for the rehearsal of the service. Jo is angry with Deed when he forces her to attend a legal meeting on the morning of the wedding itself. Will she get to the altar on time, and will she go through with it?
#22 - Above the Law
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/20/2005
Deed has three drug-dealers in his court accused of a vicious gang killing, and he comes under pressure from government law officers to hear the case without a jury. A witness is killed, and the jury starts to melt away. If the case is abandoned, the dead witness's evidence will be lost, but Deed wrestles with his conscience over setting what to him would be a terrible precedent. Meanwhile, Jo's application to adopt Michael is turned down by the Adoption Panel, who feel she is too busy with her legal career to look after a child. Deed encourages Jo to challenge the Panel's decision in the High Court.
#23 - My Daughter, Right or Wrong
Season 5 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/13/2006
In a case in Deed's court, his daughter Charlie is the junior counsel defending Henry Free - an animal rights activist charged with murder after a fire-bomb at an animal research unit killed an eminent scientist. Then Henry falls out with his leading counsel and asks Charlie to defend him - but Deed advises her not to. Part of Free's defence is that his group had been infiltrated by an officer of MI5, the British secret service, acting as an agent provocateur, and Deed is angry when Charlie reveals the officer's identity in court. Meanwhile, Jo is helping and encouraging Charlie - and she is back with her old flame, Marc Thompson. Deed is losing her.
#24 - Defence of the Realm
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/3/2005
Deed's fling with a woman claimant in his court gets him into hot water. His brother judges are appalled, and Deed finds himself exiled to Warwick.Meanwhile, Jo is sitting as a judge in a trial in which a company secretary is accused of stealing more than four million pounds from the arms king Sir Tim Listfield. Allegations are made during the trial about senior politician Neil Haughton, the close friend of Deed's former wife Georgina - Haughton is said to have taken bribes to over-pay on government defence work. Jo is threatened, and Deed comes home to help her.
#25 - In Defence of Others
Season 4 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/27/2005
Deed has the case before him of a man charged with killing a paedophile, but the jury find the defendant not guilty. After his acquittal, the man calls a press conference and sends out a message calling for similar actions elsewhere. Meanwhile, Marc Thompson, Michael's real father, arrives in England from overseas. This seems to end Jo's hopes of adopting Michael, but she starts dating the new arrival, sending Deed into a jealous rage. Deed then unwisely starts a new affair with a woman appearing in his court as a claimant in an action, and Jo decides to move with Marc to South Africa.