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Product Description ------------------- All 27 episodes from the five seasons of the television drama starring John Thaw as Kavanagh QC, one of the country's leading criminal advocates in London, who has worked his way up from a northern working class background. In 'Nothing But the Truth', Kavanagh's wife, feeling neglected because his work keeps him away from the family, begins an affair with another barrister. In 'Heartland', Kavanagh is asked to prosecute an ex-man who hospitalised a young tearaway. In 'A Family Affair', Kavanagh decides to take on a family case - of which he usually steers well clear - involving a wealthy businessman who takes the law into his own hands by snatching his young son from school. In 'The Sweetest Thing', Kavanagh defends a prostitute accused of murdering a wealthy client. 'True Commitment' sees a right-wing skinhead stabbed during a clash between radical left-wingers and a group of Neo-Nazis. In 'Men of Substance', Kavanagh takes on the prosecution of two men charged with smuggling heroin into the country. In 'The Burning Deck', Kavanagh and his friend and colleague Eleanor Harker (Geraldine James) are both in Portsmouth defending clients on charges of arson at their naval court martial. In 'A Sense of Loss', Kavanagh finds himself defending an 18-year-old who is charged with the murder of a woman while breaking and entering a newsagents. 'A Stranger in the Family' sees Kavanagh working on the case of student who has sustained spinal injuries and brain damage in an accident at the Thameside recycling centre where he had his holiday job. In 'Job Satisfaction', Kavanagh, defending a woman accused of conspiring with her brother to murder her her and stepmother, finds his concentration slipping in court when he receives some bad family news. In 'Mute of Malice', Kavanagh has problems defending a client who is either unable or unwilling to speak. In 'Blood Money', surgeon Hilary Jameson (Josette Simon) finds herself being prosecuted by Kavanagh for negligence when a computer tycoon she has operated on dies after surgery. In 'Ancient History', Kavanagh begins to question the truth when he defends family doctor Alexander Beck (Frederick Treves) against charges of having carried out war crimes. In 'Diplomatic Baggage', Kavanagh experiences dark wranglings in the corridors of power when he defends British ambassador Sir Alan Jackson's (Michael Feast) daughter, Natasha (Lena Headey), on a charge of murdering a journalist. In 'The Ties That Bind', Kavanagh is approached by his old friend Paddy Spence (Frank Grimes) to take on a private prosecution for murder. 'In God We Trust' sees Kavanagh agreeing to help out when his former colleague Julia Piper, now married and living in America, asks him to assist with the appeal of convicted murderer William Dupree (Leon ert). In 'Memento Mori', Kavanagh, now back at work following his wife's death, agrees to defend family GP Dr Felix Crawley (Tom Courtenay) when he is accused of murdering his wife. In 'Care in the Community', Kavanagh travels to his home town of Bolton to defend a young couple charged with murdering their baby daughter. In 'Briefs Trooping Gaily', Kavanagh faces a challenge when one of his clients openly confesses in court to killing her husband. In 'Bearing Witness', Kavanagh represents a Jehovah's Witness who refuses to give her son a life-saving blood transfusion. In 'Innocency of Life', Kavanagh defends a vicar when one of his female parishioners accuses him of sexual harrassment. In 'Dead Reckoning', Kavanagh prosecutes the entrepreneurial owner of a trawler lost at sea with all its men missing. In 'Previous Convictions', a jet ces into a moto-cross course after the RAF mechanic who serviced it was distracted by his wife's affair with another man. In 'The More Loving One' an explosion leads to a young man being charged with the murder of his girlfriend, who it later turns out was carrying their child. In 'Time of Need', a female junior minister at the Home Office is charged with indecent assault on a juvenile. In 'End Games', Kavanagh represents a man who was wrongly jailed for armed robbery as a result of the negligence of his lawyer, the late Sir Ronald Tibbit QC - Kavanagh's former employer. Finally, the two-hour special 'The End of Law' sees Kavanagh representing a businessman charged the murder of a beautiful young Hungarian computer science graduate after her body is discovered in his hotel room. .co.uk Review ------------- Series 1 The fact that John Thaw was able to make his eponymous character in Kavanagh QC stand out as a unique personality distinct from the superficially similar Inspector Morse says much about his understated skills as an actor. Thaw brought his trademark mixture of curmudgeonly belligerence and gruff sensitivity to Kavanagh, but the barrister--who first appeared on our screens in 1995 while the Oxford detective was still alive and kicking--is no polished-up Morse. He is far worldlier, is married and has a family. And although he is often troubled by his cases, he is never afraid to play the system. He knows that there are devious, even superficial lawyers, some of them in his own chambers, who he must face across the courtroom, but he acknowledges them as an unavoidable aspect of the world in which he works. The plots are often convoluted, but Kavanagh's wielding of the trusty of truth is always irresistible, particularly when the case involves some kind of high-level government aberration. "The End of Law" is a case in point; a particularly nasty tale about an unexceptional businessman framed for a murder which covers up an unpleasant security scandal. It's dark and dirty and full of troubling compromises. In the end, as with most of his cases, Kavanagh's craggy features convey a subtle hint of the sourness which comes with his chosen territory. --Piers Ford