A very British scandal: Mr Bates vs. The Post Office.

Abstract

In January 2024, ITV broadcast a rather unusual drama – a one-off four-part dramatization of what has been characterised as the greatest miscarriage of justice in modern British history. From a formal perspective this was a high-risk venture – even with its prestigious cast taking well below market rates. The punt paid off: within a week of the first episode’s release ITV was able to declare it their most successful new drama, since the inflated highs of lockdown. (ITV .2024) Its impact on the public psyche, the press and the political life of the country over the month that followed, however, was beyond anything its creators had foreseen. Hailed in the Guardian as ‘state of the nation TV’ (Editorial, 2024) it seems set to follow in the hallowed footsteps of ‘Cathy Come Home’ (BBC, 1966) as a text that both provokes and defines a moment of national consciousness. Mr Bates vs. The Post Office can be regarded as a ‘state-of-the-nation’ text from three perspectives. It made a direct intervention in the ‘national conversation’ bringing the real-life events at the heart of its story back to the top of the political agenda – an intervention that resonated across the media not only in the extensive coverage of the issues but in forms ranging from jokes about ITV Drama as a new branch of the legislature, to commentary debating the power of drama to ‘cut though’ the media noise in an attention-poor milieu. It activated the empathic imagination of a national audience sufficiently for them to lobby for political action, and in the process activated an imagined community (Anderson 1991) - a ‘British public’ outraged by the abuse of power within their most venerable institutions. It offered an allegory for the nation – particularly for the tension between two aspects of the nation: on the one hand national institutions, represented by the urban steel and glass of (mechanised) bureaucracy, together with the imposing, intimidating buildings and protocols of traditional power structures; on the other hand the people those institutions are supposed to serve, framed largely against a backdrop of green and pleasant land, and characterised by friendly villagers, home-baking and a salt-of-the-earth DIY hero. This paper will focus primarily on the text itself and its representational strategies, but with reference to paratextual evidence of the nature of its audience appeal and of its political impact. References ITV Press Centre (2024), ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office is 2024’s most watched programme’, 9th January, Online: https://www.itv.com/presscentre/media-releases/mr-bates-vs-post-office-2024s-most-watched-programme [Accessed: 266th January 2024] Anderson, Benedict R. (1991). Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Second Edition) London: Verso.