Judge John Deed - Broadcast

Broadcast

Judge John Deed regularly formed the backbone of the BBC One winter schedule. The pilot and first series were broadcast on Tuesday evenings at 8 p.m., with the second, third and fourth series moving to Thursday evenings (8:30 p.m. for the first two and 8 p.m. for the latter, though one episode in series three was postponed for over a month). The fifth series moved to Friday nights, and the sixth was shown two nights a week, with the first part of the story on Tuesday nights and concluding the following Thursday. This series was also the first to be simulcast on BBC HD. Occasionally, due to a clash with regional programming, it has aired at different times on BBC One Scotland; series two was delayed for sometimes over a week while series three began a half hour earlier. Series five had a six-day delay.

Ratings for the series peaked with its first episode at 9.1 million but it continued to regularly draw in around 6 million viewers for later episodes. The series has been shown internationally by, amongst others, Canvas (Belgium), BBC Canada and BBC Prime. In 2004, Variety reported an American remake was set to be produced for NBC; Michael Chernuchin was to produce the series, which would follow a federal court judge in Washington, D.C. who would preside over terrorism and civil rights cases. There have been no further developments since the announcement was made in 2004.