Kavanagh QC (TV Series) Time of Need (1999) User Reviews

Excellent episode with nice turns from Penelope Wilton and Virginia McKenna

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 16 April 2010]

Time of Need was in my opinion excellent, yes the story isn't as gripping as it is in some episodes but I liked how it was constructed. I liked the writing and directing also, and loved the production values and music, the music especially never fails to amaze me. I also really liked the acting in this one, John Thaw is the obvious actor I am going to acknowledge, but I also really liked the nice supporting turns of Penelope Wilton and Virginia McKenna whose scenes with Nicolas Jones were quite touching to say the least, and Inspector Kelso is if you ask me the epitome of seediness.

Overall, well worth watching. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Superb Episode!

[bosporan · 10/10 · 11 March 2022]

Really good one! Lots of twists and turns pulling at emotions and one of the few so far that I have not been able to predict the outcome.

Kavanagh is a wonderful series with many good episodes and this one ranks highly.

Good storyline but a puzzle at the end

[writeon-87275 · 8/10 · 16 January 2022]

This was a good episode..acting as usual..high standard..penelope wilton as usual top drawer.....but I was left asking myself why , if she admitted having sex with a minor...she was not arrested at the end ...very puzzling ..can anyone explain ?

Time of Need

[Prismark10 · 7/10 · 13 October 2023]

By the time this episode was broadcast. New Labour was in power for two years. Although a lot of the sleaze of the previous years were of the Tory kind.

Barbara Watkins (Penelope Wilton) is a government minister who faces a charge of engaging in the sexual abuse of a 15 year old boy some years earlier.

Now as an adult with a chequered criminal history, Philip Boxer has gone to the police. DCI Bob Kelso believes him, in fact he seems to encourage Boxer to take the matter to court. Only later on Boxer refuses to testify against Watkins.

Although acquitted, Watkins loses her ministerial position. Now she engages Kavanagh to sue the police for malicious prosecution. In short Kelso tried to fit her up.

No doubt the story was inspired by the likes of Jonathan Aitken, the Tory MP who sued the Guardian or libel and lost his case. Then later convicted for perjury.

It is a twisty episode, almost played like a chess game. The moral is the danger of hubris.

Comfort of strangers

[safenoe · 7/10 · 6 December 2023]

Writeon-87275 asks a good question as to why in Time of Need, the MP wasn't arrested for illegally doing the beast with two backs with the underage boy. The reason is that apart from her husband and lawyers and the underage boy himself, no-one knows about it. Also the fact that the MP won the civil action against the commissioner of police points to her "non-guilt" from a criminal perspective. But the fact that she was awarded a pittance by the civil jury showed that perhaps the writers wanted a bob each way.

Anyway, maybe Kavanagh QC can be rebooted in which case it would be called Kavanagh KC because King's Counsel. If so, I nominated acclaimed British actor Danny Dyer to play Kavanagh.