Mr Bates vs Post Office Shows Power of Art

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (as opposed to on one) you will know that ITV’s brilliant drama series Mr Bates vs Post Office has been on TV recently and has dominated the front pages ever since.

The drama has thrown a massive spotlight on the largest miscarriage of justice in English history that ruined lives and brought shame on one of the UK’s most trusted institutions.

The thing is, we live in difficult times where people want an escape and often this is into the world of TV, gaming or films, but when that escape triggers a national mood, it shows just how important the arts are to bringing about change and justice.

It is nothing new now of course, all throughout history people have used entertainment as protest or to make a point. From Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ to Channel 4’s ‘It’s A Sin’, they have succeeded because they unlock something we know to be true, a lack of justice and a social wrong. 

I think I first heard of the Post Office scandal in Private Eye, then BBC Radio 4’s podcast series looked at the history of the Horizon scandal and how the postmasters fought back. That was probably in 2019/2020, but three years later it is leading the national agenda, tearing up the scheudle in the House of Commons and dominating the front pages and social media.

There are three reasons for this, the postmasters and their legal teams, the investigative journalists who dug in and now the ITV drama.

That it took a drama to this shouldn’t surprise us, it should be celebrated that a four part TV series can alter the course of events, it has happened before, sadly it will happen again.

For those of a certain age, they will remember Jimmy McGovern’s Hillsborough drama in 1996, which helped to change the narrative from those how died from football hooligans to victims of an institutional failure and coverup.

In 2022, ITV again returned to Hillsborough with ‘Anne’, a four parter that told the story of Anne Williams and her battle to have her son’s death recognised for what it was, an injustice. 

These aren’t the only examples, there is the 2017 BBC series ‘Three Girls’ which told the story of the Rochdale Grooming Scandal, helping to raise the issue of child abuse and driving improvements in legislation to protect children.

It’s a Sin helped to change the narrative around HIV and AIDS and lead to an increase in testing and questions about the way people were treated and stigmatised.

There are also countless others examples that have done this and they succeed because their writers are able to reach out of the TV screen, grip you by the soul and make you recognise that the injustice they are portraying is wrong and something needs to be done.

Few have had the dramatic and instant impact of Mr Banks vs the Post Office in leading to immediate changes to the law and compensation being paid to people who were guilty of doing more than trying to do their job and serve their community.

But what it has done is prove that the arts aren’t just an escape, they are a vital part of society and indeed democracy and something that should be encouraged and invested in, whether that’s in schools or through community groups, whether it is writing or acting or lighting or sound engineering, they all contribute to offering us an escape and making us aware when something needs to be done.