Just when you started to wonder if British network TV drama still resonates with audiences along comes ITV's 'Mr Bates versus The Post Office'.
January 2024 has seen the four part docudrama spark public outrage and spur the Government into action by highlighting a terrible injustice.
And that's no mean feat.
In recent years, ITV has cultivated a reputation for mining prominent news stories for loads of primetime dramas.
Crime dramas fashioned around real life murders have tended to dominate its output.
Over the years, there have been excellent shows about the serial killers Fred and Rose West, the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, the Pembrokeshire murders and the Colin Howell case.
Occasionally ITV makes forays into telling stories about injustice with dramas like 'The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries' and 'Anne'.
'Mr Bates versus The Post Office,' however, focuses on the most extensive miscarriage of justice in UK history.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters in Post Offices across the UK were accused by their employer of false accounting, theft or fraud.
Some were prosecuted and convicted.
Others had their contracts terminated, lost homes, handed over savings and were pushed into bankruptcy, trying to repay the Post Office money which it insisted they stole or incorrectly accounted.
Gwyneth Hughes' four part drama sets out to right that wrong.
Built around Toby Jones' Alan Bates, we first see him as a subpostmaster in Llandudno in Wales.
Refusing to accept the accounting discrepancies highlighted by a new Fujitsu computer system introduced by the Post Office across all its outlets in the UK, Mr Bates declines to sign off accounts he knows are incorrect that may make him potentially liable for prosecution.
A stand-off develops in Llandudno Post Office, with the postal service coming into his branch during opening hours and ordering him to shut it down.
Eventually they terminate his contract.
Forced out of the business, Mr Bates and his wife, Julie Hesmondhalgh's Suzanne Sercombe carve out a new life in the countryside but they also leave with boxes of information about the Post Office's Horizon system.
Alan's refusal to sign off the accounts turns out to be a wise move, saving him from prosecution.
Many sub-postmasters are not so lucky.
Monica Dolan's Jo Hamilton, a popular subpostmistress in the village of South Warnborough in Hampshire watches a deficit double onscreen when she rings a helpline to raise concerns about the Horizon system.
Despite trying to pay off what the Post Office claims she owes, she's convicted of false accounting after being persuaded to enter a plea bargain when theft charges are brought against her in court over £36,000 in supposedly missing funds.
Anglesey man Noel Thomas, played in the drama by Ifan Huw Daffyd, spends his 60th birthday in prison after he is convicted of false accounting following a plea bargain to avoid a conviction for theft.
In Yorkshire, Will Mellor's Bridlington subpostmaster Lee Castleton is left bankrupt when the Post Office pursues a prosecution.
He's forced to find work as a electrician after he is ordered to pay £321,000 to cover money that his employer claims has gone missing as well as their legal costs.
Krupa Pattani's Saman Kaur starts to self harm after suffering the shame of media coverage over her prosecution for allegedly stealing £11,000.
Observing these cases is Alan Bates who is still smarting from how the Post Office treated him and how it ignored his claims that something wasn't right with Horizon.
Linking up various victims of the faulty computer system, he forms a lobby group in a church hall in the village of Penny Compton.
A key moment comes for the group when Shaun Dooley's union rep Michael Ruskin attends a meeting and reveals he visited staff in the IT firm Fujitsu's headquarters to discuss the Horizon system and witnessed them going into subpostmasters' accounts and changing them in real time.
After this visit, his wife is accused of mishandling accounts on the system while running their Post Office branch in Leicestershire in his absence.
Fuelled by the anger generated by these cases, Alan Bates and Jo Hamilton are able to persuade Alex Jennings' Conservative North East Hampshire MP James Arbuthnot to put pressure on the Post Office to investigate concerns about Horizon.
Ian Hart's independent investigator Bob Rutherford is called in to investigate.
Senior Post Office executives like Lia Williams's CEO Paula Vennels and Katherine Kelly's Angela van den Bongerd strenuously deny the accounts can be accessed remotely but they go along with the investigation.
As with all miscarriages of justice, though, progress is slow for the subpostmasters and it requires a lot of patience and diligence.
Obstacles are put in the way of Bob Rutherford as he becomes increasingly shocked by the injustices suffered by Lee Castleton and others.
Eventually, the walls of silence come tumbling down.
'Mr Bates versus The Post Office' is a moving drama that does a really effective job explaining a complex story about a major IT failure.
The relatability of the victims of the dodgy Horizon accounting system is the show's greatest asset, emotionally engaging the audience and stirring their anger.
Dolan, Mellor, Thomas, Pattani, Dooley, Lesley Nicol as another victim Pam Stubbs, Amit Shah as Saman Kaur's husband Jasgun Singh and Amy Nuttall as Lee Castleton's wife Lisa do a superb job emphasising their characters' ordinariness and building sympathy for their plight.
Toby Jones is wonderful as Alan Bates. Few actors do the part of an underestimated ordinary man as well as the Londoner, whose performance is a great tribute to Bates' sheer doggedness.
He is brilliantly supported by Julie Hesmondhalgh as his wife Suzanne who brings a lot of humanity to her role.
Jennings, Hart, Isobel Middleton as the forensic accountant Kay Linnell, John Hollingsworth and Adam James as the lawyers James Hartley and Patrick Green QC are perfectly cast as decent folk in positions of power trying to help the powerless.
Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadim Zahawi makes a surprise appearance, playing himself in a stirring sequence where he recreates his angry cross examination of Post Office chiefs during a public House of Commons committee hearing.
While dramas like these need villains, Williams and Kelly are careful not to veer into pantomime portrayals of Paula Vennells and Angela van den Bongerd.
They don't spit and foam at the mouth but instead spew honeyed words while frustrating efforts to get to the truth.
Efficiently directed by James Strong, 'Mr Bates versus The Post Office' knows how to build its audience's outrage and unleash it.
It never gets a step wrong in a drama that has put the Post Office and Fujitsu under the cosh, thanks to Hughes' meticulous research and sensitive writing.
It's a real testament to Hughes and Strong's handling of the cast that her skilful writing and their sensitive acting has resonated with audiences and stirred intense interest in a scandal that deserves more media attention than it got at the time.
One week on from its broadcast, 'Mr Bates versus The Post Office' has forced Paula Vennels to bow to public pressure and hand back her CBE.
Even more extraordinarily, it has compelled Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to announce the introduction of legislation to overturn 700-1,000 convictions relating to the Post Office and Fujitsu's Horizon system and provide them with compensation.
It's a massive victory for Alan Bates and his fellow subpostmasters.
It's also a hell of an achievement for Hughes, Strong and ITV that their drama has had such an impact.
It's just a terrible pity that it took an ITV drama to accelerate efforts to right a catastrophic series of wrongs.
('Mr Bates versus The Post Office' was broadcast on ITV in the UK from January 1-4, 2024)
Comments
Post a Comment