TV Pick of the Week: Mr Bates vs the Post Office - review by Yvette Huddleston

Between 1999 and 2015 the Post Office accused more than 3,000 subpostmasters around the country of committing theft, fraud and false accounting based on data collected from its Horizon IT system. Despite the Post Office being aware that there were serious software issues with the system, more than 700 Post Office workers were prosecuted. People lost their homes, lives were ruined, some committed suicide – the scandal is one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history. ITV’s four-part drama focuses on the victims’ struggle to be heard and charts their 20-year fight for justice.

Toby Jones is perfectly cast as Alan Bates, a former subpostmaster, who like many others lost his home and livelihood, has been leading the campaign since it began. As he and his wife Suzanne (Julie Hesmondhalgh) relocate to the Lake District, he decides that he has to do something to help the many others in a similar situation. A recurring theme in the drama is that people were told that the difficulties with Horizon and the anomalies in the accounting system were not happening to anyone else. It was one of many deplorable lies told by the Post Office. Bates’ sets up a meeting in a village hall, sends out invitations without knowing whether anyone will turn up – and they do, in droves. “You are not alone,” he tells them. And so begins the two decade long battle to clear people’s names.

What is most dismaying about the story is the way in which ordinary people were so terribly disregarded and how big business and the establishment were able to so criminally abuse their power. Some of this is very hard to watch; however, there are also examples of good people trying to do the right thing. Some politicians, for example, and those within the justice system who supported the victims free of charge.

This is a powerful and important piece of television, a stand-out of the past year. And if ever proof were needed that the arts are vital to our humanity and empathy especially when it comes to effecting change, the response from the public to this drama has already led to significant advances in the Government’s attitude towards and handling of the compensation and exoneration process.