Hollywood Law/Quotes

The premise is, it's a show about a maverick judge. Now, one thing you don't want a judge to be is a maverick. It's like a surgeon... what you want from judges and surgeons is consistency. The whole principle of justice is about consistency. So a judge who one day, "I don't like your face! You're dead!" and the next day "Oh, let everyone off today!", y'know, that's all wrong. And we're supposed to like this maverick judge. It'd be alright if it was a program about a maverick judge and how awful that is, and why he's a twat, and why that shouldn't be allowed. But it's not that, it's a program about how brilliant he is and how all judges by implication should be like that... the worst thing about it is that throughout the plot is so obvious and and the wrongdoers are obviously real arseholes or so obviously wrongly accused. I don't believe that's what a proper High Court judge's job is like, judging between people who actually have a bag marked 'swag' and people who are just totally innocent children. I think it's probably more complicated than that and you probably have to be quite clever, not just a kind of bolshie arsehole. He's likely to be more inconsistent, lets someone off because he fancies them. That's wrong. Judges shouldn't do that. They shouldn't be glamourised by an ex-Professional.

—David Mitchell, deconstructing Judge John Deed on TV Heaven, Telly Hell