Special recognition: Mr Bates vs The Post Office

It is no overstatement to describe Mr Bates Vs The Post Office as 2024’s TV event of the year – a bold claim for a show that went out in the first week of January perhaps, but one that is nonetheless justified by its unparalleled impact.  

ITV’s unassuming stripped four-parter chronicling the astonishing real life miscarriage of justice which saw thousands of Post Office workers wrongly accused of theft or fraud due to a defective IT system surpassed all ratings expectations, averaging a whopping 13.5m viewers after 28 days.  

The story of the sub-postmasters and mistresses, many of whom had lost their livelihoods and homes, been imprisoned or gone into debt as a result of the allegations, with four people tragically taking their own lives, had appeared in newspaper reports and podcasts – but it was the TV adaptation which brought the scandal to wider public attention.

Viewers who had watched in horror as subpostmistress Jo Hamilton (played by Monica Dolan) followed the instructions of Horizon IT support to resolve an accounting discrepancy only to watch the figure she allegedly owed double in size, sympathised with the utter despair of Saman Kaur (Krupa Pattani) and cheered on the dogged determination of the crusading Alan Bates (Toby Jones) were appalled to discover that many of those wrongly accused had not yet been exonerated and were still awaiting compensation.  

Such was the level of public outcry that within weeks of the final episode airing, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rushed through emergency legislation to overturn the convictions and to expedite compensation. 

As a Broadcast judge said, the series “provided an impressive testament to the lasting power of television to bring the nation together – and ultimately to change the world”.