Unless you’ve been living off grid in a dark cupboard you could not have failed to notice the explosion of anger over the Post Office Scandal since the first episode of Mr Bates v The Post Office aired on New Year’s Day, writes columnist Graham Bartlett.

ITV’s fact-based drama tells the story of the “affront to justice” affecting over 3,000 postmasters who, due to Horizon, a systemically faulty Fujitsu IT system, lost their livelihoods, good names, thousands of pounds and in some cases their liberty through no fault of their own.

The repercussions were the most impactive and immediate I can remember from a TV drama. After all, this is not a new story.

It has been rumbling on in the local and national press, through Parliament and the courts and even on TV documentaries and podcasts for over 20 years.

Why then did it take a scripted production at the end of the festive TV schedules to create such overdue yet warranted outrage?

I’ve written before about the power of story and how well structured, written and pitched narratives – even fictional, which this incredibly wasn’t – can inform as much as entertain.

This scandal has been going on so long, with so many conflicting viewpoints and multiple legal proceedings to unpick, that the real story has been diluted and subsumed.

Stripped back, this is about honest, hardworking people from all backgrounds, across the whole country being devastatingly scapegoated by a centuries’ old institution who

refused to admit that it had procured faulty IT.

Instead, Post Office wedded itself to the lazy and convenient alternative that thousands of their franchisees morphed into a serious crime cartel and stole thousands of pounds; money that their contract said they’d have to pay back in any case.

The most indolent and self-centred of investigations that followed merely perpetuated that myth.

In the four part format, ITV employed familiar methods to tell this gargantuan story; through the points of view of a handful of relatable,

likeable and partially flawed characters.

In essence, the message was told not in the language of pounds lost, cases litigated or pages written but in showing how people like us had their lives and reputations ruined in the most savage fashion by a company we have all been brought up to trust.

By approaching the scandal this way, viewers who may have had scant or no knowledge of the decades of injustice literally playing out on their high streets were able to absorb, understand and hold an opinion without having to catch up on every column inch of reporting.

We learn so much through well told stories and, providing these fact-based dramas do not veer too widely from the truth, they work to

highlight important events and issues that otherwise are pushed

down the news agenda by the here and now.

In the last 12 months, other dramas have served the same purpose: The Long Shadow, about the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, The Reckoning which dramatises the Jimmy Savile scandal and The Sixth Commandment which exposes the truth behind two suspicious deaths in sleepy

Buckinghamshire are just three examples.

Each was scripted, structured and produced in the same way as any fictional story but these were

true and were all the more gripping for it.

It’s only two weeks since Mr Bates v The Post Office hit our screens and, at the time of writing, we have seen the former CEO hand back her CBE following unprecedented public pressure, the government announcing plans for new legislation to overturn the 700 plus wrongful convictions and improve compensation for victims. This is all they can do now, but it’s taken 24 years and a TV drama for this to happen.

By the time this is published, hopefully there will be other announcements such as stripping the Post Office’s ability to investigate and prosecute offences against itself, large government contractors having legal responsibilities to recompense those wrongly affected by faults in their goods or services and a more

rigorous application of the Code for Crown Prosecutors when evidence and proceeds of such crimes cannot be found.

Mr Bates v The Post Office may only have been four hours long, but, if there is any justice, its ripples will be felt for many a year to come.

Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire, out in March 2024