Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Mr Bates vs The Post Office dramatized the unfathomable plight of hundreds of subpostmasters losing life-changing sums of money to Horizon IT.

But series director James Strong argues that part of the story’s success is that it isn’t entirely unfathomable. If you’ve ever felt your heart drop when checking your bank balance right before pay day, there’s a chance you can empathise with a woman alone in her Post Office, confronted with scarily large numbers.

Niamh Algar, starring as a hospital doctor who becomes embroiled in a medical scandal in the ITV series, was named Best Actor.

ITV’s much-garlanded campaigning drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office picked up yet another award, with Gwyneth Hughes named Best Writer.

The ceremony, hosted by Bradford-born comedian, writer and actor Jessica Knappett, was held at Headingley Stadium in Leeds.

ITV’s digital transformation. The ever-changing nature of advertising. The ethics of Ed Balls interviewing his wife, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, on Good Morning Britain: these were some of the topics discussed when Amol Rajan interviewed ITV CEO Carolyn McCall.

The four-part factual entertainment series will see the duo take on a series of challenges to try and improve their lives. The pair will dabble in spirituality and living off-grid – leaving everything at home, including toilet paper – to find if there’s a better way to do their forties.

Along the way, viewers will get to see what makes their bromance tick, and watch as both actors confront their fear of ageing.

Across four parts, the series told the true story of the more than 900 subpostmasters who were wrongfully prosecuted for stealing from the Post Office because of a faulty computer system called Horizon.

Bolstered by the likes of stars Toby Jones and Monica Dolan, the series so heart-rendingly humanised the horrific miscarriage of justice that, as of late-April, around 13.5 million people had tuned in.

“My dad always told me you can change the world with drama, particularly new writing, and I would reply: ‘You can’t.’”

Polly Hill speaks fondly of her father, the veteran actor Dave Hill, whose long list of stage, film and TV credits testifies to his half-century in the business, and who used to take his teenage daughter weekly to the theatre for inspiration. “Then Mr Bates came along. My dad’s nearly 80 now, and he took delight in saying: ‘See, I told you.’”

Mr Bates vs the Post Office belongs to that handful of British TV dramas – think Cathy Come Home or Queer as Folk – that changed the world we live in, but the shocking truth is that it almost didn’t get made.

This was one of several remarkable insights shared with the RTS into the four-part ITV series that finally drew the public’s attention to what may be our broken nation’s gravest miscarriage of justice ever.

Did Mr Bates vs the Post Office have you glued to your TV screen?” asked ITV on social media. The question – presumably rhetorical given the New Year drama’s colossal ratings – was plugging an archive clip of what seems to be the first TV news coverage, in English, of the UK’s biggest miscarriage of justice. “In English” is important.