The new drama on ITV1, MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE, seems to have us all fired up. Rarely has a factual drama made such an impact as this. Ordinary decent working people whose lives have been utterly wrecked. It’s a story which will continue long after the TV drama ends.
It tells the story of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history. Hundreds of innocent subpostmasters and postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud, and false accounting due to a defective IT system. Many of the wronged workers were prosecuted, some were imprisoned for crimes they never committed, and their lives were irreparably damaged by the scandal.
Toby Jones, Monica Dolan, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Lia Williams, Alex Jennings, Ian Hart, Katherine Kelly, Shaun Dooley, Will Mellor, Clare Calbraith, Lesley Nicol, Amit Shah, and Adam James star in the new ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, written by acclaimed screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes (Tom Jones, Honour, Vanity Fair) and produced by ITV Studios and Little Gem.
Following the landmark Court of Appeal decision to overturn their criminal convictions, dozens of former sub postmasters and postmistresses have been exonerated on all counts as they battled to finally clear their names. They fought for over 20 years, finally proving their nnocence and sealing a resounding victory, but all involved believe the fight is not over yet, not by a long way.
Between 2000 and 2015, the Post Office held thousands of its own sub postmasters and postmistresses liable for financial discrepancies hrown up by Horizon, its hugely expensive but unreliable computerised accounting system. Despite warnings that the system was flawed, the Post Office relentlessly pursued the sub postmasters and postmistresses, telling many of them they were the only ones having problems with Horizon.
Of those affected by the faulty IT system, 736 were prosecuted, hundreds more lost livelihoods, homes, and life savings because they paid back money the Post Office claimed was missing. Several went to prison, some while pregnant or with young children, and many were shunned by their communities. Some have since died before they could find any justice.
The drama narrates how in 2009, a group of sub postmasters from across the UK decided enough was enough and formed the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance.
The real life Alan Bates said…….
“Over the years a lot of words have been written about how lives have been wrecked by an out of control government organisation, however they have never come close to expressing the true horrors that have been inflicted on people. I think this drama is the first time anything has come close to getting across the suffering many of the victims have had to cope with.”
Alan is played by TOBY JONES, who gives an outstanding performance in the show. We aske him how he came to be cast in the drama….
“I was approached earlier this year by Patrick Spence, the Executive Producer, who I had worked with previously on Marvellous (BBC). I was already predisposed to it because Patrick is such a fantastic producer. He and James [Strong, Director] and Gwyneth [Hughes, Writer] talked me through the issues that it addresses, which I am ashamed to say I had a scant knowledge of. Gwyneth had hewn a drama out of the most extraordinary amount of research.
I wanted to do it because it’s an urgent piece of drama, so much TV today is preoccupied with our recent history, rather than what is the actuality.”
Did you have much contact with the real Alan Bates during filming?
“One of the brilliant features of this story is that it features characters from the whole of the United Kingdom; one of the pleasures of it will be recognising how multicultural and how diverse the population of subpostmasters are. I wanted to represent Alan properly in that context.
I’m not playing Alan Bates. I’m playing Gwyneth Hughes’ version of Alan Bates’. I had said to Alan, ‘I’m not going to imitate you, but I need to be you enough to differentiate you, to show where you’re from and to root you in a specific context’. This was because Alan isn’t metropolitan like me, or from the south.
He’s originally from Liverpool and has been living in Wales for some time. So, I talked to him about his roots, his work, the main events of his life, his routines. Secretly, I was trying to work out what drove him on, but he’s remarkably adept at obfuscating, at not giving any clues as to how he has come to do what he’s done. It’s a genuine humility that he has and there is something mysterious about that in this day and age.”
We asked Alan (the real one) how his story came to be told as a TV series.
“Following the judgements and the court findings about how the Post Office had lied and covered up the true facts about all the problems with its Horizon system there was quite a lot of publicity. A number of people from different production teams began to contact me. Natasha [Bondy] at Little Gem approached me and the series and documentary came from there.”
And yet it was a story that was overlooked for so long…….
“It was. The biggest problem with all of this is that the Post Office decided to take an approach of utter denial about everything, an approach which was effectively a threat to sue anyone who dared say otherwise. Over the years we’ve gone through a whole host of other processes but the Post Office just kept on assuring everyone that everything was fine and the system was robust and there were no problems with it.
There were numerous letters to MPs and all sorts of evidence was building up, but it wasn’t until we got the Post Office in front of the judiciary, when they couldn’t keep the evidence covered up any more or control the narrative, that the truth started to be exposed. But it was a long haul getting there.”
What for you would be the right end to the story Alan?
“For me to try and draw a line under my involvement will be when the initial 555, the group that brought the court action, have received the financial redress due to them.
That’s a process that is underway now, and in theory, should be finished by August of next year. You will never be able to repay people for what they’ve gone through and you will never be able to give them back all those years of suffering that they’ve had to endure. But hopefully, it might alleviate some of their problems going forward.
Another issue, and my current source of campaigning, is around the mental anguish of the families. At the moment the government hasn’t taken that on board. These families need professional mental health assessments and support, not just financially but in other ways as well. I’ve been trying to push this with ministers and I just get back civil servants’ letters, as you might imagine. That’s high on my campaign list at the moment as well as trying to bring the real guilty in all of this to account for what they have done.”
The drama will keep you gripped from episode one and even though you think you know where the story is going to take you, it is a journey filled with frustration and heartbreak. I guarantee you’ll be shouting at the TV and reaching for the tissues in equal measures.
There are many superb performances from a cast who clearly felt the pain suffered by the real life characters they portray.
JULIE HESMONDHALGH plays Alan’s partner Suzanne Sercombe. MONICA DOLAN is Jo Hamilton and delivers some truly powerful moments through every episode. Paula Vennells was the CEOof the Post Office at the time the scandal erupted. LIA WILLIAMS takes on this difficult role with incredible skill.
And WILL MELLOR is Lee Castleton. We asked Will to tell us more about the real man…..
“Lee Castleton is what you’d class as an everyday guy. He’s got his wife and two children and he runs the local Post Office. He’s just an average person, like most of these people are. And then he suddenly sees some discrepancies showing up on his system as well as some shortfalls. It’s a few thousand pounds and so he obviously thinks there’s something wrong with the system, because his calculations are right.
It all starts to go wrong from there: the Post Office deny that there’s any fault at their end and though Lee says that he hasn’t taken the money they say he’s going to have to pay it back. And it just spirals from there. Lee believes all he has to do is tell the truth and it will be fine, his name will be cleared. He believes in British justice.
Meanwhile this whole thing gets out in to the public domain, and people are spitting at his children, swearing at him in the street, because he’s been ‘stealing from old people,’ in his role as a subpostmaster.”
How on earth do you prepare for a role like this?
“I spoke to the director, James Strong: I’ve worked with him on many things before including Broadchurch. And he said, ‘We don’t need to do an impression of the real Lee, what we would like is a way to convey the emotion and tell a story.’
That was what was most important to me — learn about the story, make sure the emotion is right and try to play it as real as possible. So people can feel it, feel what they went through: from the start to the end, they just get ground down until there’s not much left.”
MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE is on ITV1 right now and you can watch all episodes on ITVX. Just a word of warning, this is definitely one of those binge watch series. You will be hooked from start to finish.
