In the series premiere, we are introduced to the double life of Superior Court Judge Nicholas Marshall (Ramy Zada) who is a by-the-book judge by day and a guardian of justice by night. His associates are Cat (Begona Plaza) and Moon (Dick O'Neill) and in the premiere they add to their ranks Gibs (Clayton Prince), a special effects wizard. Their first target is Caldecott Rush (Shane Black), a corporate hitman who kills a company spy and his girlfriend and is let off by Nick on a technicality. The four then proceed to convince Rush that his last employer, an aerodynamics company with government ties, is out to terminate him. After the company's CEO is exposed by Nick and the gang, they follow Rush to the home of the arresting office in his case. He deliberately planned the bad arrest because Rush's identity had been made. After Rush kills the policeman in a struggle, the newly christened ""Night Watchmen"" deliver their verdict and depart before the police arrive. Rush is then sentence
Nick in rough disguise goes to a strip club to help out an old friend, Jason Grey. The undercover cop needed Nick's help to solidify his cover. Nick beating the hell out of Grey in the club does not work, as Grey is killed by his targer. The man responsible is Sterling Pope, a high-rolling drug middleman. Gibs poses as an IRS agent who then takes money under the table from Pope, who ironically funds the Night Watchmen's operation to take him down. Cat poses as a rich, beautiful woman to get Pope's attention. Nick re-enters the picture in his rough disguise from the club (hair down, cut on the face, unshaven, bandage on nose) and threatens Pope with his life if he doesn't move some drugs for him. This truly makes Pope a middleman, as his life is threatened by both Nick and the boss who will get his drugs, Mr. Brandon. As expected, the drug deal goes bad, Brandon escapes as does Nick, but Pope is arrested. Horton then drops the charges with the understanding that any claim to the
Architect David Gordon has killed his wife and now his partner, and with the secretary in on it, he thinks he is scot free. His cleaning lady saw him and turned him in, but since she is an illegal alien she flees and there is no witness to the crime. Nick's idea is to have Gordon solve his own crime. An experimental drug administered by Gibs causes temporary amnesia. The sting here is to set Gordon, who is a freak for detective novels, up as an old-time gumshoe with Nick as his partner, Cat as his wife, and Moon playing the role of the murdering architect. Flashes of his memory begin to return gradually, which are sparked by the return of the secretary, who had skipped town to beat the heat of the trial. They make her jealous when she sees Gordon with Cat. After a staged shootout with ""Gordon"", they break into Gordon's house and then the real Gordon has a ""hunch"" on where the bodies are buried. He is in the middle of digging them up when everything is clear. After a fistfight w
Nick's mentor on the bench, Judge Carter Harrison, is murdered by his new bride, Dana Hollister, who has a history of marrying rich old men and then bumping them off. The Watchmen set up Moon as a rich man for Dana to marry. Meanwhile, Harrison's son-in-law is determined to expose Hollister for what she is. She intimadated his son not to testify by killing their dog. Also he feels he is losing his wife and feels competetive with Nick. Moon proposes marriage, and they sneak out of the ceremony to be alone. Dana thinks she has committed the deed when the other three burst in (Nick had been playing Moon's younger business partner, Gibs was the limo driver, and Cat was Moon's former fiance who Hollister thought she electrocuted) and Moon wakes up, obviously not dead. A tape recorder hidden in the room seals Dana Hollister's appointment with the Superior Court.
Nick temporarily transfers to civil court, where he hears a case against the televangelist Horace Blake, who has made a Bakker-esque claim that the Lord will take him on Easter if he does not raise a certain amount of money. The Watchmen set out to convince the reverend that the Lord is fully intending to bring him home, in other words, to con a con man into believing his own scam. Cat plays a prostitute to test Blake's faith, Gibs is the new sound guy on the TV show, who then introduces the plagues to his viewers. A burning bible, frogs, the mark of the devil, all this tests Blake's scam in his own mind. In a deranged panic, he kidnaps Cat and takes her to the apartment where his father, also a preacher, died of a heart attack with a prostitute. Eventually, Blake confesses all on TV, gives the money to the masses, and eventually preaches to his fellow prisoners.
McGrath, a thug-for-hire, is intimidating the mostly Jewish population of the Bay Heights neighborhood by posing himself and his gang as neo-Nazis. In reality, they are being paid by Richard Hastings, an ambitious businessman who is trying to force everyone out so he can buy the land up for cheap and renovate that part of the city. A young boy who works for Greenbaum, a local merchant, witnesses McGrath commit a murder, but is too scared to complete his testimony in court, not to mention his father disapproves of his involvement in court. Nick has Gibs pose as a victim of the hate gangs who Greenbaum takes in and has work in his bagel store. Cat discovers McGrath's plan at a local hangout and is forced to ride along on a drive-by shooting. Nick had tried scaring the thugs away from the boy, but failed to prevent Greenbaum's store from being shot up. Finally, Nick forces a confession out of McGrath, and the videotape from the store is broadcast at the dedication ceremony for the ne
On their latest sting operation,Gibson,Moon,and Maria are caught when Federal Agents arrive at the scene too soon.Nick arranges to have them tried in his Courtroom.Will they be found not guilty?
The second season premiere sees Bruce Abbott assume the role of Nick Marshall and Janet Gunn join the cast as Kelly Cochrane. Kelly is introduced as a P.I. who flagged a police car down for help outside a nightclub and was attacked and raped by the officers. After the case doesn't fly in Nick's courtroom, Nick, Gibs, and Moon trail the four dirty cops. Unbeknownest to them, Kelly is also trailing these cops. She drops her camera on Gibs from the roof of a building and one of the cops is shot and killed by an unknown assailant in the process. The cops are in debt to a loan shark and are robbing businesses on their beat to pay him back. Nick bugs their warehouse poker game but when he retrieves his tape, he is discovered by Kelly, who has figured out the Night Watchmen's secret. In the meantime, another of the police officers is shot and killed. She joins the group and they set up shop as furriers with an opening night inventory worth a million dollars of fur coats, borrowed by Mo
CBS aired a two-hour movie version in the summer of 1993.