Time of Need

Time of Need is the best-rated film of Kavanagh QC on IMDb, at 9.0 out of 10, and it was meant to be part of the fourth series. A scheduling change meant that it did not go out in 1998 under its working title, Ceremony of Innocence. It was shown in the fifth series under the title Time of Need.

The story starts with an accusation. Barbara Watkins, a senior Labour MP and Home Office minister played by Penelope Wilton, is accused of sexual abuse by a petty criminal named Philip Boxer, played by Brian McCardie. The incident is alleged to have happened fifteen years earlier, in Hastings, when Boxer was fifteen.

Kavanagh defends Watkins when the case comes to court, and she is found innocent of any wrongdoing. That is not the end. She is later sacked from the government, and Kavanagh helps her to sue the police for compensation, on the grounds of malicious prosecution. TVDB, which describes the junior minister as bringing the case herself after being cleared of indecent assault on a juvenile, adds that Kavanagh discovers that the truth is more extraordinary than he could have imagined.

Wikipedia singles out one element, Kavanagh's cross-examination. It calls it rapier-like, and says that he uses it in the quest for truth. The film therefore concerns an advocate who has already won one case and then, acting in a second action for the same client, uses his skill to find out what really happened.

Andy de la Tour wrote the film, and David Thacker directed. The cast includes Kenneth Cope as Maurice Fitzalan, Susan Engel as Mrs Justice Witrow, Hugh Dickson as Mr Justice Ansley, Anne Carroll as Phyllis Labone, David Fahm as DS Thomas Raeburn and Rebecca Front as Cathy Winslow, with Oliver Ford Davies as Peter Foxcott QC.

Wikipedia records that Shabana Mahmood, Lord Chancellor since 2024, has credited the example of the programme for encouraging her to enter the legal profession. The film was shown on Monday 22 March 1999, the third of the four films in the fifth series. Central Television made it for ITV. Wikipedia gives its audience as 9.56 million viewers.

IMDb voters give it 9.0 out of 10, the highest score of any film in the series, and the site's recommended film from the final series.

The sources do not say what the more extraordinary truth is, and they do not report the outcome of the compensation claim, so the account leaves both unspoken.