Martin Shaw – IDLIX

The Professionals

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:29:40 +0000

The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain’s CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley.

The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.

The Professionals

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:29:40 +0000

The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain’s CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley.

Apparitions

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 10:49:04 +0000

Apparitions is a BBC drama about Father Jacob Myers, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, played by Martin Shaw, who examines evidence of miracles to be used in canonisation but also performs exorcisms. As he learns, Jacob’s duties run deeper than just sending demons back to Hell; he later must prevent them all from escaping.

Unlike most portrayals of exorcism and spirit possession in fiction, Apparitions is more religiously accurate and fact-based, incorporating the nature of demonic possession as described by the Church. It also recounts historical events associated with Christianity and other Abrahamic religions, which may have been caused by Heaven or Hell, indicating that the War described in the Bible may not have fully concluded.

The series is written by Joe Ahearne.

Judge John Deed

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 03:15:51 +0000

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 have been released on DVD in the UK.