Judge John Deed review: Martin Shaw's lascivious lawyer goes unpunished, but you can't say the same for the viewer

This soapy courtroom drama first appeared on the BBC, and ran for six series from 2001 to 2007, amounting to 29 episodes, the majority of which are scarcely believable 90 minutes long.

Scarcely believable because there is very little of note happening to keep those 90 minutes going.

Judge John (former Professional Martin Shaw) stomps about the courtroom, and the chambers and various different restaurants, righting what he perceives to be wrongs in a way which would give any Lord Chancellor the conniptions.

Not content with interfering with police investigations, badgering witnesses or steering barristers in what he sees as the right direction, Deed is also obsessed with another QC, Jo Mills (Jenny Seagrove), sleeping with her whenever the mood takes him.

Generally, the morning before he's due to appear as the presiding judge in one of Mes Mills' cases.

But the lascivious lawyer doesn't draw the line there.

Oh dear me, no.

Deed seems to wander about in almost state of arousal, hitting on women left, right and centre with an incredible degree of success.

At the last count, as well as Mrs Mills, he has slept with his ex-wife, several prosecuting barristers, a number of defence barristers, plaintiffs in civil cases, waitresses and his daughter's best friend.

And as each affair ends, he scuttles back to he safe harbour of Jo Mills, proclaiming his love and affecting the pouty face of the perennial child whenever he is rebuffed.

As his psychotherapist notes – just before he sleeps with her, of course – to Deed “sex is some deep pathology you're suffering”.

In the Me Too era, this careless promiscuity seems jarring, but to he creators of Judge John Deed it makes their hero a dashing rake, chivalrously standing up for women's rights in court, whether it's fighting to keep a mother's children out care or to get treatment for deadly disease.

And while Deed may be on the side of the angels when it comes to the law, he is an unreconstructed male chauvinist in every other facet of his life, constantly attempting wield his influence to suit himself – particularly, as we have seen, when it comes to affairs of the heart.

As well as the repeated beddings, binge-watching all this nonsense flags up other repetitive tropes.

The main being that Deed is forever inviting people out to eat. Every conversation starts or ends with a one-word invitation. Usually “Dinner?”, but often “Lunch?”, as if Deed – who definitely has a kitchen in his home, we see it – can't lower himself to a menial task.

All the while, Shaw plays him with intense, lugubrious seriousness, as if he believes that the slower he speaks the better the dialogue.

Meanwhile – despite the fact he is a working class lad from Coventry made good – he speaks with punnet full of plums in his mouth.

When Donald Sinden is not most fruitily-voiced person in a TV drama, you know something's gone wrong somewhere along the line.

All the southerners are authority figures or successful, all the northerners are the downtrodden, the victims or the criminals.

The plots crawl along, there's rarely any jeopardy because you know Deed will triumph in the end, and the natural theatre that is the courtroom is almost entirely absent, the only thrill arising when you notice the future stars in the cast list – Nicholas Hoult, or Rory Kinnear or Eddie Marsan.

There is a saying that “no good deed goes unpunished”. In this case, while Deed may escape scot-free, the viewer is bitterly regretting their choices in life.