Mr Bates vs The Post Office (2024) Biography Drama (4 x 46 min episodes) (1 x series)

A four-part British television drama series for ITV, written by Gwyneth Hughes, directed by James Strong and starring an ensemble cast led by Toby Jones. The series is a dramatisation of the British Post Office scandal, a miscarriage of justice in which hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted privately and publicly for theft, false accounting or fraud due to a faulty computer system called Horizon. It was broadcast on four consecutive days from 1 January 2024.

The series takes its name from the court case instigated by the former sub-postmaster Alan Bates and others.

Synopsis

A faulty IT system called Horizon creates apparent cash shortfalls that cause Post Office Limited to pursue prosecutions for fraud, theft and false accounting against a number of sub-postmasters across the UK. In 2009, a group of these, led by Alan Bates forms the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance.

The prosecutions and convictions are later ruled a miscarriage of justice at the conclusion of the Bates v Post Office judicial case of 2019.

Trivia

Member of Parliament Nadhim Zahawi played himself, in a cameo role, as a member of a Parliamentary Select Committee which examined the scandal surrounding the Horizon computer system that was responsible for the financial irregularities wrongly attributed to many sub-postmasters.