Watching the drama in December, ahead of it airing on New Year’s Day, I had to agree with screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes’s “boss”, who told her and the rest of the team that the drama would be “flattened by The Tourist”.
I personally anticipated that it would come and go – those who watched it would feel a burning fury at the injustice presented, as I did, but that it wouldn’t touch the news agenda, and people would, sadly, move on. After all, there had been reporting on the Post Office scandal for years, and the airing of a drama wasn’t, in itself, an update to the story.
There are a number of reasons why I, and likely others, missed how charged and potent the reaction to Mr Bates vs The Post Office would be.
For one thing, while watching dramas, whether fictional or based on a true story, sometimes we can miss the wood for the trees. I certainly did. Picking up on a clunky line of dialogue here, a melodramatic musical cue there, or even a slightly bizarre and off-putting cameo, it can be easy to watch with too intense of a critical eye, and miss the bigger, emotional picture.
But perhaps the greatest reason not to expect an overwhelming reaction such as the one this has received, is that many of us had come to believe that linear television no longer had the power to become a cultural moment in the way that this has. In a marketplace which has become diluted to the point of breaking, and when choice is the order of the day, it just didn’t seem possible.
So thank goodness for Mr Bates, which has proven not only that it does still have that power, but that it can, under the right circumstances, have more power than we ever actually thought possible.
There were a number of factors which aligned to make this the multi-level success it became. The strength of the drama was, of course, a major contributor, and that shouldn’t be understated. It managed to explain a complex issue in a way which was digestible, accessible, and yet still emotionally charged, without patronising or talking down to viewers.
There was also the cast. Not only did each of them give impressive performances, led by Toby Jones’s strong work as Alan and Monica Dolan’s heart-rending performance as Jo, but it was also a cast filled with big, recognisable names.
Had the drama starred a group of first-time actors or lesser-known stars, it seems unlikely that as many people would have tuned in, nor that it would have been featured in such a prime-time slot.
However, none of this is to say that it’s the starriest cast ever assembled – there was a Paramount+ show last year starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren – nor that it’s the best piece of drama. Just last year there were docudramas with arguably subtler, stronger writing, such as The Long Shadow, and hard-hitting fictional pieces such as Time season 2 which barely got a look in.
So there are other factors at play here – the timing of release, the nature of the scandal it dramatises, the current state of the news agenda, and a multitude of political factors, this being an election year, meaning it was in the interests of politicians to act on the wave of public outrage.
Whether it tops anyone’s best shows of the year list come the end of 2024 remains to be seen, but if there was a most important shows of the year list, or even of the decade, you can imagine it would be right up there, pretty much unchallenged. It will go down in history in a way which most pieces of television just won’t.
This is also a major win for linear TV, in proving its continued relevance and power. While bigger budgets and slicker production values can be found largely exclusively on streaming services, can anyone really imagine a more polished version of this having anywhere near the same impact if it dropped on Netflix or Apple TV+?
In fact, even if this had just been streamed on ITVX, rather than also airing on ITV1, it seems hard to imagine that it would have caught fire in the way that it has. No wonder it is already being added back into the schedules for a repeat viewing, pulling in maximum additional eyeballs.
Of course, there are questions about whether drama should be responsible for bringing about societal changes, particularly when they were evidently just as possible before it was aired. Equally, as much as people may now be hoping that Jones signs up to dramas about other issues of injustice, we certainly shouldn’t start to expect other real-life series to work in the way that this has.
Studios and broadcasters will almost certainly take the wrong lessons from this, and start making a deluge of programmes which are simultaneously dramas as campaign tools. After all, this hasn’t just been a talking point, a critical success or a tool for change, it has also been a substantial ratings winner.
In truth, this feels like a lightning in a bottle kind of series and moment, and one which is unlikely to be successfully repeated anytime soon.
Regardless, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of learnings about TV and our relationship to it that we can take away from this. In a way, Mr Bates vs The Post Office has proven that dramas are continuing to reach into people’s lives and truly affect them.
Fictional dramas may not provoke the same external response because they don’t have to and they’re not intending to – no one’s seriously calling for justice for some character in Doctor Who or Grantchester, and it wouldn’t make the national news if they did.
But if this has proved anything, it’s that TV and drama still have more power than we perhaps give them credit for, and the ability to move people in different ways. Sometimes these will simply be to bring people joy, to help them connect more fully with a loved one, to re-shape their world views about a certain topic, or make them aware of an undiscussed truth.
And others, they will, quite literally, change people’s lives.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office is available to stream in full on ITVX. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.
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