It’s almost beyond belief. If you’ve been following the news coming out of the UK over the past week or so, you’ve no doubt heard about the post office scandal. No? It’s the New Year’s gift that the Conservative-led government there not only didn’t need but, even worse, can’t seem to deal with in a fair and decent manner. Though the matter has been brewing for decades (plural!), it blew up when British broadcaster ITV aired its four-part dramatization, MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE, beginning on New Year’s Day. Even today (January 17), it’s headline news as the government shamefully scrambles on damage control.

MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE tells the shockingly true story of how the UK Post Office’s Horizon computer system created cash shortfalls in the accounts of hundreds of sub-post offices around the country. Under the contract terms that the government corporation negotiated with its sub-postmasters, it was the responsibility of these people to pay back any shortfall they accrued. Month after month, the sub-postmasters were calling up the Horizon help desk hotline to report accounting discrepancies and each time these people were told that they were they only ones who were experiencing this problem. In one case, one sub-postmistress watched her shortfall double in front of her eyes. Many of these people were forced to borrow money from family members or mortgage their homes to pay these debts and, when the amounts became untenable, the Post Office’s auditors swooped in and shut their post offices down leaving the people broke, unemployed and often homeless with their reputations in their tiny communities shattered. One such sub-postmaster, Alan Bates (Toby Jones, INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY), decides that he’s not going to take the matter lying down and he mounts a David vs. Goliath campaign to uncover the truth. It takes him 20 years to get there but it’s a Pyrrhic victory as thousands of lives get destroyed along the way.

Watching this series, it’s impossible not to feel a mammoth sense of sympathy towards these good people while shouting expletives at the TV screen as the Post Office executives lie, scheme and obfuscate to keep their misdeeds covered up. Director James Strong, who won a BAFTA for his work on one episode of TV’s DR. WHO (“Voyage of the Damned”), and writer Gwyneth Hughes deliver a searing story of a gross abuse of power that bizarrely pushed the government into finally doing what it should have done years ago. Jones is perfectly cast as this story’s superhero and I recommend that you watch the supplemental episode entitled MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE: THE REAL STORY to see how closely he got to capturing the real Alan Bates’ personality. In fact, all the key actors in the series including Monica Dolan (EMPIRE OF LIGHT; CYRANO) as Jo Hamilton, Alex Jennings (TV’s THE CROWN) as James Arbuthnot, and Lia Williams (TV’s THE CROWN) as the story’s real-life villain, Paula Vennells, nail their characters. Perhaps the most recognizable face in the cast outside of Jones belongs to Lesley Nicol, who played the beloved Mrs. Patmore on DOWNTON ABBEY. Here she plays a composite character named Pam Stubbs who also gets screwed over by Vennells et al. I love her but her performance is a bit OTT, especially compared to the understated performances of the others. I guess you need to have one.

What the Post Office did to these people went way beyond the pale, and it was only compounded by how little justice was finally delivered. The settlement that was eventually reached between “Bates & Others” and “Post Office Ltd” was disgustingly inadequate and not one Post Office executive, including Paula Vennells, has yet to be charged with a crime much less receive a slap on the wrist for their part in this grand deception.

MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE is currently available in the UK on the ITVX streaming platform. Outside of the UK, you’ll need to have a VPN to watch it. It’s definitely worth watching even if you don’t live in the UK.

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