The first in a new four-part legal drama series written and produced by G.F. Newman, starring Martin Shaw as the eponymous judge and Jenny Seagrove as his protegee.
Deed presides over a rape case in which Jo Mills is the prosecutor, and angers the Lord Chancellor's department with his judgement in a wife-beating case.
Director Mary McMurray (S) (W)

Judge John Deed (Martin Shaw) brings a decidedly maverick style as well as plenty of sex to his chambers
Judge John Deed
8.30pm BBC1 Judge John Deed must be every Home Secretary's dream. Not only is he a judge, but he also acts as a prosecutor. What a novel way of reducing lengthy trials.
Of course, he doesn't do both jobs officially, because that isn't allowed. He's just that type of man. Committed, scornful of cant and hypocrisy, constantly bucking against authority. To sum up, he's a maverick. (We've had maverick police, maverick doctors, maverick pathologists, maverick harbourmasters. Why not a maverick judge?) Judge John Deed (Martin Shaw) is also athletically sexy, with a penchant for well bred women. He meets the terrifyingly posh Lady Francesca Rochester (Jemma Redgrave) in a bar and has propositioned her before the bubbles in her gin and tonic go flat.
But he never lets sex get in the way of his work because he has sex at work, the naughty thing. Yes, right there on his desk in chambers. But it's all right, because he's just made a colossal breakthrough in a case he's trying. And a man has to celebrate somehow.
So, as you can tell, much of judge John Deed, which starts a new series tonight after a pilot last year, is great fun in a swashbuckling kind of way, though you can't help but feel that this isn't its intention. There are far too many cumbersome comments on the criminal justice system for that.
The first episode sees Deed trying a couple of contentious cases while having to deal with the establishment, which is breathing down his neck to free a wife-abuser who happens to be a well placed police informer.