Deed presides over the murder trial of Maurice Hart, a black defendant who shot and killed the driver of a van which ran over and killed Hart's daughter in a hit and run accident.

At the same time, the judge is keen to investigate Hart's attractive defence counsel more closely, and he also jousts over the case with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at a London fencing club. Of course, Deed undertakes these misdemeanours against his professional code in supposedly good causes. These include helping his student daughter Charlie to protest against genetically modified crops (and springing her from the cells when she is arrested) and working out how to free his vigilante defendant.

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.

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.

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.