Bearing Witness

Bearing Witness puts Kavanagh in a position where his personal views and his professional pride are at odds. His clerk Tom Buckley, played by Cliff Parisi, asks him to represent Tom's former girlfriend, Susannah Emmott. Deborah Findlay plays her.

Susannah had been briefly married to a Jehovah's Witness, whose beliefs she took on before he left her and the faith. She has a son, Luke, aged thirteen, played by Joe Roberts. Luke's father knows nothing of him. The boy needs a life-saving blood transfusion, which is against his mother's religious beliefs.

TVDB follows what happens next. When the mother refuses, Luke is made a ward of court and the hospital asks for judicial permission to go ahead. The hospital wins its action and Luke is given the transfusion. Then, with his mother's help, he escapes from the hospital, and he dies shortly afterwards. His father, prompted by a national newspaper, brings an action for manslaughter against his estranged wife, and Kavanagh is called as a reluctant witness.

Wikipedia puts it from the beginning of the story. Kavanagh, it says, may find himself on the other side of the courtroom. The case is close to home, since the woman who needs a lawyer is his clerk's former girlfriend.

In chambers, Jeremy Aldermarten gets himself involved with a group of tree-huggers who want to save local woodlands. The comedy is the series' usual light relief, set beside a story about a boy's death.

Edward Canfor-Dumas wrote the film, his second after The Ties That Bind, and Peter Smith directed. The cast includes Richard Cordery as Eric Rawlings, Stephen Crane as Ron Bourne, Paul Clarkson as John Lloyd, Peter Ashdown as Paul Knight and Graham Bill as Judge Brewer, with Susannah Elliott-Knight as Diane Vassall and Valerie Edmond as Emma Taylor.

Cliff Parisi, who plays Tom, is the actor the Classic Film and TV Café reviewer identifies from Call the Midwife; in the series he is the chief clerk who assigns cases and manages the business affairs of the chambers. On the DVD release the film opens the second disc of the fourth series. The film was shown on Tuesday 7 April 1998, the fourth of the six films in the fourth series. Central Television made it for ITV. IMDb voters give it 8.0 out of 10.

The Classic Film and TV Café reviewer, writing in 2019, noted that Kavanagh can be found on either side of a courtroom, defending or prosecuting, as British barristers can.

The sources read do not give the result of the manslaughter action, so the account ends with the case being brought.