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

Abstract

A very British Scandal: Mr Bates vs. The Post Office 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 very high-risk venture – even with its prestigious cast taking well below market rates. The punt paid off, however. 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. Its impact on the public psyche, the press and the political life of the country over the month that followed, moreover, was beyond anything its creators had foreseen. Hailed in the Guardian Editorial as ‘state of the nation TV’ it seemed set to follow in the hallowed footsteps of ‘Cathy Come Home’ (BBC, 1966) as a text that both provoked and defined a moment of national consciousness. This text can claim ‘state-of-the-nation’ credentials 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 for long enough to engender flurry of overdue legislative action. The contribution of the show was so fundamental that jokes about ITV Drama as a new branch of the legislature did the rounds for several weeks after broadcast, while serious commentators debated the power of drama to ‘cut though’ in the media noise in an attention-poor milieu. • Among a diminishing and increasingly sub-divided TV audience it achieved remarkable viewing numbers and generated sufficient engagement that viewers not only watched the show but discussed it at length and indeed lobbied via online petitions on behalf of the victims. It activated the empathic imagination of a nation, and with it an imagined community (Anderson 1983) - a British public outraged by the abuse of power, the failure in fair play and the sorry state of three venerable British institutions –the British Justice system, the British government and most of all the British the Post Office, that by virtue of its unique position and powers came to represent both. • It offered an allegory for the nation that highlighted the tension described by Andrew Higson (1995) between national institutions and the people whose interests they are supposed to represent. Notably, in the show, national institutions are represented primarily by the urban steel and glass of (mechanised) bureaucracy, together with the imposing, intimidating buildings and arcane protocols of long-established institutional power, while the British people are seen largely against a backdrop of a green and pleasant land, characterised by friendly villagers and home baking, and led by a DIY hero. In this chapter I will focus on this allegorical function, looking primarily at 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.