Episodes cast for
"Kavanagh QC" (1995) More at IMDbPro »

Season: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Year: 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2001

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Season 1

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Season 1, Episode 1: Nothing But the Truth

3 January 1995
Successful but over-worked barrister James Kavanagh defends David Armstrong, a Cambridge student of impeccable background who is accused of rape by Eve Kendall, the wife of his employer. Eve's husband Alan is having an affair and she is lonely, which, at first sight, makes her seem to be a fantasist fabricating a consentual happening, which is Kavanagh 's line of defence. However he also has to face the fact that his wife Lizzie, upset by her husband's workaholism, is having an affair with a colleague.

Season 1, Episode 2: Heartland

10 January 1995
In Sunderland a young former car thief is run over by a local vigilante, leaving him brain damaged. His mother asks Kavanagh to to take on the case despite lack of sufficient evidence.

Season 1, Episode 3: A Family Affair

17 January 1995
Michael Duggan has received an eight month sentence for kidnapping his own son. Kavanagh defended him and now Duggan's ex-wife and her new husband are seeking a court order banning all contact between him and the child. The case takes a turn when Duggan reveals to his solicitor that the boy's stepfather is abusing him. In a separate case, Kavanagh is prosecuting a pornographer whose defense is that her work is art. At home, Kavanagh faces the inevitable when daughter Kate wants her boyfriend to spend the night. In Chambers, Aldermarten considers running for Parliament and asks a special favor from Julia.

Season 1, Episode 4: The Sweetest Thing

24 January 1995
Kavanagh defends Annie Lewis, a high class prostitute accused of killing an entrepreneur who had a reputation for being a risk-taker and who regularly enjoyed the company of paid escorts. Annie claims she is innocent and refuses a plea bargain offered by the prosecution. The defense challenges the testimony of witnesses who claim to have seen her leaving the hotel just prior to the murder, though she claims to have left several hours before. On the home front, Kavanagh is concerned about the future of his marriage when he learns Lizzie may get a senior level civil service appointment in Strasbourg and daughter Kate, who is about to leave for university, is having boyfriend problems. In Chambers, Jeremy is at his chauvinistic best when he initially refuses Julia's request to play in the annual cricket match.

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Season 2

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Season 2, Episode 1: True Commitment

26 February 1996
Kavanagh finds himself defending a left-leaning protester accused of stabbing a skinhead at a protest march. The accused claims that it was entirely his fault, but when he hears that his upper middle class girlfriend has shopped him to the police, he changes his story saying he was just being chivalrous and that it was his girlfriend who did the stabbing. The Kavanaghs continue their commuter marriage with Lizzie working in Strasbourg and it all proves to be a challenge to them both. Kate has left for Cambridge and Lizzie is pleased to hear that her tutor is the husband of one of her closest childhood friends. She is far less pleased when she learns that her daughter and the tutor are having an affair and Kavanagh himself simply blows a gasket.

Season 2, Episode 2: Men of Substance

4 March 1996
Kavanagh finds himself prosecuting a case for HM Customs. The case is anything but straightforward however. While 15 kilos of heroin was seized being smuggled in condemned meat, there is no physical or forensic evidence linking the drugs to any of the accused. One of them, Kevin Gregson, may have eliminated a witness in a previous case and he seems true to form when Kavanagh and his wife are threatened. Kavanagh suspects that not all is on the up an and as far as the evidence is concerned.

Season 2, Episode 3: The Burning Deck

11 March 1996
Kavanagh defends Lt. Ralph Kinross RN accused of starting a fire in a barracks. His co-accused is Jones, a childhood friend who is a sailor in the same unit, who had loaned money to the sailor whose bed was set on fire. Kavanagh's colleague Eleanor Harker QC is defending Jones but is also having problems at home. The defense focuses on the role of Chief Evans, the senior rating in charge of the engineering department, who was also Jones' main tormentor. In Chambers, Julia receives a proposal of marriage but has only a very short time to make up her mind.

Season 2, Episode 4: A Sense of Loss

19 March 1996
The shooting of a young policewoman draws Kavanagh into a tragic case in which his client refuses to help himself.

Season 2, Episode 5: A Stranger in the Family

1996
An industrial accident at a Recycling plant leaves a young man mentally and physically impaired. Kavanagh goes to court to secure a fair settlement from the insurance company for the family.

Season 2, Episode 6: Job Satisfaction

2 April 1996
Kavanagh faces the most complex case of his career: a man and his sister appear to have murdered their father, a farmer, and his second wife.

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Season 3

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Season 3, Episode 1: Mute of Malice

3 March 1997
Kavanagh's defence of an army chaplain accused of killing his brother is made all the more difficult by the fact that his client refuses to speak. Is he simply being uncooperative, or has the trauma of service in Bosnia rendered him mute? Meanwhile, Aldermarten faces traumas of his own when the judge involved in his case has a nervous breakdown.

Season 3, Episode 2: Blood Money

10 March 1997
When her husband dies in the operating theater following a car crash, Sarah Meadows believes there is a case of negligence. With Jeremy Aldermarten representing the hospital, Kavanagh agrees to take on her case, despite his misgivings as to the likelihood of winning. The surgeon left the theater before closure, but at a point when the patient was doing well. In Chambers, Kavanagh is asked to speak to one of his colleagues over her behavior. At home Kavanagh and his wife are disappointed when son Matt fails his A-level exams.

Season 3, Episode 3: Ancient History

17 March 1997
Kavanagh prosecutes an apparently blameless family doctor in an unprecedented war crimes trial and finds himself wondering about the fallibility of human memory after fifty years. The court hears devastating testimony, as victims of Nazi atrocities relive their experiences of concentration camps.

Season 3, Episode 4: Diplomatic Baggage

24 March 1997
Natasha Jackson is the daughter of the UK's ambassador-designate to Austria, Sir Alan Jackson. She is charged with murder in the death of Lisa Aeurbach, a journalist. Natasha's defense is that the woman was dead when she arrived for an interview. The case takes an interesting twist when Kavanagh is approached by a mysterious government official whose only concern is to keep HM's ambassador-designate as far away from scandal as possible. Matt decides to move out on his own and his parents are surprised to learn he's sharing a flat with two attractive young women. In Chambers, Peter Foxcott takes an interest in an old friend he has not seen for many years.

Season 3, Episode 5: The Ties That Bind

7 April 1997
Kavanagh agrees to take on a private prosecution against Ian Vincent who is believed to have beaten 17-year old Graham Foster to death for having stolen a briefcase from his car. Vincent's stepfather, Ron Baab, heads a crime family and tries to buy everyone off with both money and veiled threats. There is little solid evidence and the case relies primarily on Graham's girlfriend who has also been threatened. In Chambers meanwhile, Aldermarten is anxiously awaiting the results of his application to join an exclusive mens club to which Peter Foxcott is a member.

Season 3, Episode 6: In God We Trust

14 April 1997
Kavanagh finds himself in Florida assisting his one-time pupil Julia Piper in preparing an appeal for an inmate who is on death row and awaiting execution in the electric chair. It is apparent that his original defense was badly handled from the start. Many facts were left unchallenged by the defense and no mitigation was offered at the sentencing stage despite his limited emotional development and abuse-laden upbringing. When Julia goes into premature labor, Kavanagh finds himself actually pleading the case and uncovering the true nature of what happened. At home meanwhile, Lizzie Kavanagh learns some distressing news from her doctors but waits until her husband's return to tell him.

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Season 4

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Season 4, Episode 1: Memento Mori

17 March 1998
Following Lizzie's death Kavanagh takes on the case of a doctor, Felix Crawley, charged with killing his depressive,and unfaithful,wife Ann with an overdose of lithium. The doctor claims he has treated Ann in secret because of the shame of her disorder and the death was accidental. Kavanagh takes on prosecution witnesses,including Ann's lover and her young niece,whose advances Felix spurned, and,as the case draws to its verdict, comes to appreciate that he is identifying with his bereaved client.

Season 4, Episode 2: Care in the Community

24 March 1998
Kavanagh and chambers head Peter Foxcott go to Kavanagh's home town, Bolton, where Kavanagh is defending Debbie Sattenthwaite and Mark Holmes, charged with killing their fourteen month old daughter. Unfortunately the couple's evidence suddenly starts to clash as Mark changes his story and Foxcott is shocked at the way Kavanagh goes for Debbie, requiring his intervention to assist his colleague.

Season 4, Episode 3: Briefs Trooping Gaily

31 March 1998
Kavanagh, who is still mourning his wife's death, has to defend a woman charged with killing her abusive husband. Despite having a good case for manslaughter, she seems determined to plead guilty to murder. Meanwhile Jeremy is torn between the demands of his lead role in a Gilbert & Sullivan production; and a charge of professional misconduct for looking at a defense brief.

Season 4, Episode 4: Bearing Witness

7 April 1998
Kavanagh's personal views and professional pride clash when his clerk Tom asks him to represent a former girlfriend Susannah Emmott. After they split she was briefly married to a Jehovah's Witness whose beliefs she took on before he became disillusioned and left her. She has a son, Luke, aged thirteen, whose father knows nothing of him and who needs a life-saving blood transfusion, which is against Susannah's religious beliefs. Jeremy gets himself involved with a group of tree-huggers out to save local woodlands.

Season 4, Episode 5: Innocency of Life

14 April 1998
Kavanagh successfully defends a young vicar, Ian Winfarthing,when pub landlady Anne Murchison accuses him of sexual harassment. But when Anne is charged with killing her drunken, bullying husband,Tom, Ian comes forward to claim that he and Anne were lovers, the harassment case being a smoke-screen and they were in bed together when Tom died. Jeremy dates a glamorous aristocrat, throwing her over for his career's sake when she tells him she is pregnant, and later finding he has dumped a millionairess.

Season 4, Episode 6: Dead Reckoning

21 April 1998
Kavanagh goes to Yorkshire fishing port Stainmouth to prosecute Roy Lawrence for negligence after his apparently unseaworthy trawler sank,claiming five lives including Roy's son Paul. The defence claims that a submarine collided with the boat, a claim that becomes more and more likely. Roy is popular in the bereaved community and even Emma, Kavanagh's junior, feels sorry for him, but Kavanagh believes Roy had his own agenda and is not the philanthropist he seems. He also averts a chambers crisis by dissuading Tom from leaving.

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Season 5

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Season 5, Episode 1: Previous Convictions

8 March 1999
An RAF jet plane crashes onto a moto-cross event, killing twenty-two people,including friends of Matt, Kavanagh's son. The mechanic who serviced it kills himself when he discovers his girlfriend,Charlotte, whom he knew as Lisa, used him to access plans of the base and its planes. She has connections to a French radical group and is charged with sabotage and conspiracy to murder. Her arrogant stance and Matt's disapproval do not help as Kavanagh calls witnesses to show that the crash was, in fact, an accident. Jeremy's attempts to become a Euro MP end in disaster as does - almost - a conjuring trick Peter tries at a chambers dinner.

Season 5, Episode 2: The More Loving One

15 March 1999
Drug addict Annie Fiske dies in a gas explosion following an argument with boyfriend Michael Woodley about her return to heroin. Michael, a convicted arsonist, tells a witness "I killed her",and refuses to give Kavanagh ammunition for a defence.However, helped by his junior,Martha Miller,who has previously felt under-valued,Kavanagh uses shock tactics to get a response from his client. He also begins a hesitant relationship with colleague Eleanor whilst Jeremy proves to be a dog's best friend and ends up co-investing in a racing greyhound with Tom.

Season 5, Episode 3: Time of Need

22 March 1999
The past comes back to haunt government minister Barbara Watkins who is dropped by her party. Sixteen years earlier she was charged with having under-age sex with 15-year-old Philip Boxer but she was acquitted when Philip testified that a vengeful police inspector had put him up to telling the story. Now Barbara wants to sue the police for malicious prosecution, though Kavanagh is concerned, not without foundation, that the original facts will be dredged up again. Jeremy has a heart-to-heart with his mother.

Season 5, Episode 4: End Game

29 March 1999
In 1985 a student and a pregnant woman were shot dead during an armed robbery. Three men were apprehended and sentenced to life imprisonment, Kavanagh being a junior member of the defence team. Seven years later,one of them commits suicide,leaving a note to say that one of his fellow prisoners was innocent and, after public pressure, an appeal is launched with Kavanagh and Jeremy Aldermarten representing the couple. However Kavanagh begins to suspect that somebody does not want the truth to be revealed. Peter has a health scare and recommends Kavanagh as head of chambers. Eleanor parts as friends with Kavanagh to be a prosecutor in the Yugoslav International war Crimestribunal in the Hague.

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Season 6

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Season 6, Episode 1: The End of Law

25 April 2001
A woman is killed in a hotel room and minutes later drunken Harry Hatton is arrested leaving the room and tried for murder. He is found guilty and his daughter Alison lodges an appeal. Sarah Swithen, his brief, engages Kavanagh,now chambers head and in the running to become a judge,who takes on the case against advice that it could harm his appointment. Private detective Mark Yelland proves that another man was in the murder room on the day -Rayner,the head of a computer firm,possibly engaged in illegal government work,and the dead woman was not an escort,as believed, but a computer expert. Kavanagh suspects a conspiracy,especially when he must forfeit his post as a judge to head the appeal and a frosty female justice chairing the appeal does not inspire confidence. Fortunately for Kavanagh, Mark and Sarah share his commitment to bending the rules to obtain justice though he regards it as a bitter victory where "noone won."