The Post Office scandal: How a TV drama delivered justice
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2024
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Prime Minister has announced new legislation to quash the convictions of wrongly accused subpostmasters. It comes after a groundswell of interest - and outrage - in the story after an ITV drama was broadcast last week. How did a TV show achieve what years of journalism and a public inquiry had failed to? And what next for the convicted subpostmasters?
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Transcript
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| 0:37.0 | slash optimise oracle.com slash optimise oracle.com slash optimise It's barely even mid-January and we might have already had the most consequential TV drama of the year. |
| 0:54.0 | They're not calling me a thief, they wouldn't dare. |
| 0:57.0 | They say money's somehow gone missing from this branch, which it hasn't, |
| 1:02.0 | and I have to pay it back, which I won't. |
| 1:04.6 | So I say, prove it. |
| 1:06.8 | Prove that I'm wrong, and you're right. |
| 1:18.0 | The papers have been full of it for years, but I TV's Mr Bates versus the post office put the gripping, troubling tail firmly in the spotlight. |
| 1:22.4 | The post office scandal has been brewing for more than a decade, |
| 1:25.0 | but it's taken in ITV drama to really get everyone appropriately outraged. |
| 1:29.0 | Why is that? |
| 1:30.0 | Mr Bates versus the post office tells the shocking true story of hundreds of |
| 1:36.2 | innocent post office operators wrongly accused and some sent to prison for theft and fraud. |
| 1:45.3 | We've had Westman's drop in arms. Mr Speaker, this is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation's |
| 1:50.1 | history. People who worked hard to serve their communities have their lives and their |
| 1:54.3 | reputations destroyed through absolutely no fault of their own. |
... |
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