In God We Trust

In God We Trust takes Kavanagh out of England altogether. He flies to Florida to help Julia Piper-Robinson, his one-time pupil, prepare an appeal for a man on death row, awaiting execution in the electric chair. Anna Chancellor plays Julia, who has married an American lawyer since she left the series' chambers.

The man's original defence was badly handled from the start, according to Wikipedia. Many facts were left unchallenged, and no mitigation was offered at the sentencing stage, though the man had limited emotional development and an upbringing marked by abuse. TVDB says Kavanagh is driven by a desire for justice and by a wish to help his former colleague.

Then Julia goes into premature labour. Kavanagh finds himself actually pleading the case in her place, and uncovering the true nature of what happened. He pleads the case in Florida, and the summaries leave it to the viewer to discover the result.

At home, his wife Lizzie, played by Lisa Harrow, learns some distressing news from her doctors. She waits until her husband returns from Florida to tell him. The following series opens with her death, so the news in this film is the first sign of what is to come, though Wikipedia's summary does not say what the news is.

Russell Lewis wrote the film and Charles Beeson directed. The cast includes Bruce Boa as Governor Stamford Cotton, Earl Cameron as Joseph Cook, Sam Douglas as Paul Cantrell, Ron Berglas as Ossian Buloni and Ione Brown as Jackie, with John Thaw and Anna Chancellor in the lead roles.

The film was shown on Monday 14 April 1997, the sixth and last of the third series. Central Television made it for ITV. IMDb voters give it 6.2 out of 10, the lowest score of the entire run.

The Classic Film and TV Café reviewer agrees. In a 2019 review of the series, the reviewer calls it the only truly bad episode, a rare misstep that feels like the racially charged Deep South of the 1960s rather than Florida in 1997. The same review is critical of the way Julia's story is handled, with the character appearing in Florida married and pregnant without explanation.

Anna Chancellor and Lisa Harrow, who played Julia and Lizzie, leave the regular cast after this series, according to Wikipedia's cast list.

The sources read do not give the result of the appeal, so the account does not either.