It's been a strange start to the media year in the United Kingdom. Thanks to Mr Bates vs The Post Office, a four-part miniseries broadcast on ITV in the early days of 2024, Britons have finally been moved to consider the terrible fate of at least 800 post office managers unjustly accused of fraud between 1999 and 2015 thanks to faulty accounting software called Horizon.
The software caused deficits to appear for no reason in the postmasters's bank accounts, giving the false impression that they hadn't declared all their earnings. Their contractor, the state-owned Post Office, took them to court, demanding they repay the cash shortfalls. Most were ruined, their reputations destroyed, and over 200 even went to prison despite being innocent. With more than 9 million viewers in one week and a deluge of protests on social media, Britons have expressed their compassion and a very strong sense of injustice.
The first testimonies from beleaguered postmasters were published as early as the late 2000s, and a crucial High Court judgment in 2019 definitively ruled that Horizon was "defective," contrary to the claims of the Post Office and the Japanese Fujitsu Group, the software's publisher. But after years of political indifference, the pressure had suddenly become so intense that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak denounced on Wednesday, January 10, the UK's "worst miscarriage of justice" and promised a law in the coming week to clear the postmasters and compensate them as quickly as possible.
The power of images
In a country where it takes years for victims of miscarriages of justice to regain their rights, this speed speaks volumes about the power of images and a well-scripted story to raise awareness. Patrick Spence, the series' producer, brought in well-known British actors Toby Jones and Monica Dolan to play real-life postmasters – in this case Alan Bates, head of a victims' association, and Jo Hamilton, former manager of a post office in Hampshire.
The first scenes are perfectly sown: Without overly technical explanations, they immediately arouse empathy. A self-controlled Jones fights the abuse of power by Post Office investigators. Dolan, bewildered by the panicking numbers on her Horizon terminal, doesn't understand what the software publisher's hotline is telling her. Commentators have compared the series to Cathy Come Home, a 1966 Ken Loach TV film that changed British perceptions of homelessness. Others have cited Hillsborough, by Jimmy McGovern, broadcast in 1996, which raised awareness of the tragedy of the 94 football fans killed in 1989 during a match between the teams of Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
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