Sheltering from the sun with Kavanagh QC

The British summertime has belatedly arrived and my fair English skin had had as much sun as it could take for one day, so I turned to television. Not in the mood for the Law & Order on Hallmark, I opted for Kavanagh QC on ITV3.



I like Kavanagh - I'm a big fan for John Thaw - he reminds me a bit of my father - they both had that air of melancholy about them in later life. But I don't think I'd actually seen any Kavanagh since it was first on the television, and even then I didn't see much of it.

Now Kavanagh isn't a detective -he is a lawyer and the programme is pretty much a courtroom drama. He doesn't really go out investigating to the extent that Perry Mason does. But ordinarily, he is a criminal lawyer so its good enough for me. This episode however he took on a personal injury case, rather reluctantly because, like me, crime is his thing.

I have some vague memory of watching Kavanagh in the past and it being rather upsetting, not in a gory way, but tugging at the old heart strings. This episode was the same - a bright young student was injured at the shipping company he was working at during his holiday, it left him in a wheelchair with memory loss. The relationship between the lad and his parents was very moving and well-written - far superior to anything ITV has put on in recent years.


The programme time-slot was sponsored by AXA - a finance company who amongst other things specialise in insurance - which seemed ironic when the episode was about a family taking on a insurance company for compensation.


I noticed a couple of other things during the episode. Kavanagh's kitchen cupboard contained three jars of Marmite - I know you either love it or hate it, but that seems excessive. Poor set dressing really. The other was the witness who was shown to be living in a depressing flat tending to a sick wife, had the same vegetable rack we had in our old flat - it was pretty grim.