Judge John Deed is a British legal drama television series produced by the BBC in association with One-Eyed Dog for BBC One. It was created by G.F. Newman and stars Martin Shaw as Sir John Deed, a High Court judge who tries to seek real justice in the cases before him. It also stars Jenny Seagrove as the barrister Jo Mills, frequently the object of Deed's desire. A pilot episode was broadcast on 9 January 2001, followed by the first full series on 26 November 2001. The sixth and last series concluded on 18 January 2007. The programme then went on an indefinite break after Shaw became involved in another television programme, and he and Seagrove expressed a wish for the format of the series to change before they filmed new episodes. By 2009, the series had officially been cancelled. The six series produced make it the longest-running BBC legal drama.

The factual accuracy of the series is often criticised by legal professionals and journalists; many of the decisions taken by Deed are unlikely to happen in a real court. The romanticised vision of the court system created by Newman caused a judge to issue a warning to a jury not to let the series influence their view of trials—referring to an episode where Deed flouts rules when called up for jury duty. Another episode led to complaints about biased and incorrect information about the MMR vaccine, leading the BBC to ban repeats of it in its original form. All six series (with the exception of two episodes from Series Five) have been released on DVD in the UK.

John Deedes (14 June 1803 – 11 January 1885) was an amateur English cricketer.

Deedes was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. He made his first-class debut for Cambridge University in 1822, playing a single match for the club against the Cambridge Town Club. During the same season, Deedes made his first-class debut for Kent against the Marylebone Cricket Club.

Deedes next first-class appearance came in 1827 for the Gentlemen in the Gentlemen v Players player fixture, in which Deedes appeared in both the Gentlemen v Players fixtures for 1827, as well as representing Kent in a single first-class match against the Marylebone Cricket Club.

In 1828 Deedes made his only first-class appearance for pre-county club Hampshire against an early England team. Deedes also made two further appearances for Kent in 1828, with his final first-class appearance for the county coming against pre-county club Sussex.

In 1829 Deedes played in the unusually named first-class fixture Married v Single, where Deedes represented the Single team, suggesting at this time Deedes was not married or had no partner of sorts. Deedes played a final fixture for the Gentlemen in the 1829 Gentlemen v Players and made a single first-class appearance for England against pre-county club Surrey.

Martin Shaw (born 21 January 1945) is an English actor. He is known for his roles in the television series The Professionals, The Chief, Judge John Deed and Inspector George Gently.

Shaw was born in Birmingham. According to him, his first stage appearance was at age three, during an amateur show in which his parents were performing. At Great Barr School, where musician Steve Winwood was a classmate, Shaw excelled in English literature and drama lessons. At sixteen, he was offered a scholarship to a Birmingham drama school. Declining the scholarship, he left school and, on the advice of his parents, he sought employment. One job was in the office of a brass foundry. At eighteen, Shaw moved to London to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He served his apprenticeship in repertory as an assistant stage manager at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch and the Bristol Old Vic.

Shaw took key roles in the first revival of Look Back in Anger (Royal Court/Criterion, 1968); in the National Theatre's Saturday, Sunday, Monday opposite Laurence Olivier (1973); and in A Streetcar Named Desire presented by the Piccadilly Theatre in 1974. He later acknowledged the role of Stanley Kowalski in 'Streetcar' as a point of breakthrough in his career.

A Man for All Seasons is a play by Robert Bolt. An early form of the play had been written for BBC Radio in 1954, and a one-hour live television version starring Bernard Hepton was produced in 1957 by the BBC, but after Bolt's success with The Flowering Cherry, he reworked it for the stage.

It was first performed in London opening at the Globe Theatre (now Gielgud Theatre) on 1 July 1960. It later found its way to Broadway, enjoying a critically and commercially successful run of over a year. It has had several revivals, and was subsequently made into a feature film and a television movie.

The plot is based on the true story of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century Chancellor of England, who refused to endorse King Henry VIII's wish to divorce his ageing wife Catherine of Aragon, who could not bear him a son, so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, the sister of his former mistress. The play portrays More as a man of principle, envied by rivals such as Thomas Cromwell and loved by the common people and by his family.

Jennifer Ann Seagrove (born 4 July 1957 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya (now Malaysia)) is an English actress. She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and rose to fame playing the lead in a TV dramatisation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance and the 1983 film Local Hero. She is now well known in the character of Jo Mills in the long-running BBC drama series Judge John Deed (2001–07). Her credits as a voiceover artist include a series of Waitrose television advertisements.

Jenny Seagrove's theatre work includes the title role in Jane Eyre at Chichester Festival Theatre (1986); Ilona in The Guardsman at Theatr Clwyd (1992); and Bett in King Lear in New York, again at Chichester (1992).

She played opposite Tom Conti in Present Laughter at the Globe Theatre (1993); Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker at the Comedy Theatre (1994); Dead Guilty with Hayley Mills at the Apollo Theatre (1995); Hurlyburly for the Peter Hall Company when the production transferred from the Old Vic to the Queen's Theatre (1997); co-starred with Martin Shaw in the Parisian thriller Vertigo (Theatre Royal Windsor October 1998) and then with Anthony Andrews (also Windsor,1998).