There is a cliché that often gets rolled out when talking about journalism or other factual programming. “The truth,” they say, “is stranger than fiction.” It’s a quick way of getting across those incredible stories which seem to defy the drabness of everyday life. But its occasional use also speaks to the opposite being true, fiction is, for the most part, stranger than truth. Mr Bates vs the Post Office (ITV) is an example in point. The story of a group of ordinary people falsely accused of fraud by a massive corporation after an IT error, this is something you have to see not to believe.
Alien Vs Predator, Freddy Vs Jason, Kramer Vs Kramer now there’s a new death match in town. Mr Bates vs the Post Office follows Alan Bates (Toby Jones), a sub-postmaster, as he brings together a group of fellow professionals whose accounting software errors saw them accused of criminality. This is the real life story of an injustice done through ineptitude and malevolence combined. The journey is long but successful years spent campaigning for justice until finally victorious. “If we’re going to walk away,” Bates tells his wife Suzanne (Julie Hesmondhalgh), “we’ll do it with our heads held high.”
Jones leads an excellent cast as another softly spoken yet tenacious man, but it’s an ensemble piece full of great performances by British television actors you’ve seen in everything. Adam James, Shaun Dooley, Monica Dolan, Will Mellor, Alex Jennings and many more imbue the men and women caught up in this scandal with humanity and dignity. What’s less easily explained is the decision to allow Nadhim Zahawi a sitting MP who was sacked as a minister earlier this year over accusations of financial impropriety to play himself. If part of Mr Bates vs the Post Office’s aim is to set straight (“They won’t ever put another picture in the paper to say I’m innocent,” laments Krupa Pattani’s Saman), then letting a disgraced politician launder his reputation feels off.
It’s the kind of weird call this show avoids making otherwise. The action begins in media res, with issues being thrown up by the “Horizon system” and lives ruined. “My savings are gone, my credit cards are maxed out,” weeps Jo (Dolan). “No one else has these problems,” a succession of sub-postmasters is told by disembodied tech support. But it is happening, and while it’s difficult to make digital bookkeeping visually dynamic, the consequences are clear and painful. “They want to close me down to shut me up,” Bates tells the police. “Because they don’t want other people to know what I know.”
The danger with a show like this is that it will fall prey to the expository urge and let the storytelling be swamped by detail that has hitherto been delivered via a series of Panorama exposés (not to mention books and podcasts). In its well-meant earnestness to vindicate the sub-postmasters, Mr Bates vs the Post Office concentrates too much on story and not enough on telling. “Past master and liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Arbitrators,” Bates says, introducing a new character, “and board of the Inland Revenue’s chief prosecuting and investigating accountant.” That is howlingly bad dialogue used to introduce people into stories so as push plots along.
Keeping tension going over four hour-long episodes is tricky getting across the technicalities of the “institutional obstinacy” that led to convictions being wrongly secured over several years, and many lives ruined, is fiddly. Getting into nuts-and-bolts about Horizon isn’t conducive to dramatic programming; spelling out for audiences exactly what happened just doesn’t make good telly. I can’t see too many sticking with Mr Bates vs The Post Office for all four nights.
Happily, for those with limited attention spans, ITV is also showing a one-hour documentary about the scandal, called Mr Bates vs the Post Office The Real Story. This telling involves interviews with the real-life characters (“It was diabolical,” says the real Alan Bates, “something had to be done about it”) and integrates scenes from the show, much as Crimewatch used to do with dramatisations. The documentary’s narrower scope does help address the dramatic sagginess of its sibling.
The key problem for Toby Jones et al in Mr Bates vs The Post Office may lie within the title itself. Bates might make a good everyman figure; but he is being used as a vague proxy for a large group of mistreated sub-postmasters. His crusade is an administrative one, his enemy an institutional one. The Post Office’s CEO at this time, Paula Vennells (Lia Williams), gives human face to an attempt by those in charge to close ranks against wrongly accused franchisees; but the Post Office itself is a slippery, unsatisfying villain. Through weird creative choices and technical intrigue, Mr Bates vs The Post Office ends up being a drama about humans that could use more drama.
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