Kavanagh Q.C. - The Complete Collection [DVD]

Description

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-policeman 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 policewoman 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 father 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 Herbert). 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 crashes 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. desertcart.co.uk Review Series 1The 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 sword 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 Review: Kavangh Q.C. - Great Show, Better value from desertcart UK - I am a big John Thaw fan, so I really enjoy Kavanagh Q.C. The programs are well-written, well-acted, well-produced and thoroughly enjoyable. Having said that I'd like to offer a recommendation to American fans of British TV DVDs. For those of you who enjoy British television programs, do yourself a favor and purchase an "all-region" DVD player. My friends and I have all purchased the Pioneer DV420V all-region DVD player from desertcart U.S. Cost is under $100 (under $80 in my case). It comes ready-to-play DVDs from any and all regions in the world. Once you have this little beauty you can order British TV titles on DVD from desertcart UK. They sell for a fraction of the price of the same titles in the U.S. (when they are available in the US - there are many titles that aren't sold in the U.S., or the U.S. titles available are many seasons behind those released in the UK). For example, the Complete Inspector Morse lists for well over $400 in the U.S. You can find it for as little as $340 on desertcart, sometimes cheaper elsewhere. However, the Region 2 version sold through desertcart UK sells for under $70, even with the current strong US dollar. So even after purchasing the Pioneer DV420V, you still save almost $200. That's on a single title. The Complete Kavanagh Q.C. sells for about $250 in the U.S., $28 on desertcart UK. Granted, the U.S. versions of these two programs come with a nice wood storage box, but other than that the programs are identical. For the money you save you can buy wood boxes for them and still save a ton - if wood storage boxes are your bag. So you can purchase Morse and Kavanagh in the U.S. for $590 from desertcart U.S., or both titles and the Pioneer DV420V all-region DVD player for less than $180 from desertcart U.K., saving $410! Both programs and the DVD player and still save over $400. Wow! Other bonuses from buying British titles from desertcart U.K. include a quicker release date - many British titles in the U.S. are well behind the U.K. releases - and unedited programs. For some reason the U.S. versions are often edited, cutting out portions of the original UK broadcast. I find this troubling to say the least. Also, sometimes the original music in the U.K. broadcast is changed, I'm guessing this is because the producers only obtained the U.K. rights for music when they made their programs, not worldwide music rights. This isn't always the case, but it happens frequently enough that it bears mentioning. So you get the DVDs quicker, cheaper and better. In the U.K. as soon as a program finishes its season (or series as they call them in the U.K.) the DVD comes out. That's usually not the case in the U.S. I don't know why the U.S. lags so far behind the U.K. in DVD release dates, but it does. So do yourself a favor. Buy the Pioneer DV420V - an excellent DVD player, by the way - and purchase region 2 DVDs from desertcart UK. You'll save a ton of money and often get a better product. Oh, by the way, there's another bonus - all-region means all-region, so if you get DVDs from other regions, like Japan, South America, India, China, etc., you're golden. The DV420V will play them all. Without any fooling or fiddling around. It comes set-up to play everything. (Note: I've read a few reviews from people saying they had trouble playing other region DVDs with the DV420V. In every case all they needed to do was read the manual and follow the easy instructions for setting the DV420V to all-region play. I did it just to see how hard it is to do, and in all honesty, a fifth-grader could do it. You'd have to be a complete moron to not be able to follow the all-region set-up instructions. However, as I said before, the DV420V comes with its default set to all-region, so it shouldn't be necessary. I mention this only in the rare event that it doesn't come set for all-region play so you'll know that it is a very simple matter to fix it. Review: Excellent - An excellent series with a good insight into the legal profession and its idiosyncrasies. Acting is superb and the storylines interesting. It's also great to see actors using knives and forks correctly. Edit - The episode called 'Previous Convictions' has part of the story as concerning an aircraft crash involving an RAF trainer, the Jet Provost. In the credits I noticed there was no 'advisor' from the RAF, or if there was he was not up to the job. The events leading up to the crash would NOT have caused the crash. There was a serious lack of understanding of the RAFs servicing and maintenance procedures. I was an RAF aircraft engineer for 16 years. The aircraft also crashed about 1/2 mile from where the injured and killed spectators were shown.