Mr Bates vs The Post Office producer Patrick Spence addressed the show’s future at the BAFTA Television Awards on Sunday.
Joining the show’s cast and creative team in the winner’s room after picking up the gong for Limited Drama, Spence was asked if he would be interested in continuing the story and exploring the ongoing fight for justice.
“I think that’s your job,” he told the press. “We’ve done our bit, we’ve carried the baton for a bit, we need you guys to spread the message that they haven’t been paid yet, it’s not over, and they are being bamboozled with bureaucracy.
“Please, we beg you, don’t make us make another drama, get the message out,” he continued, adding: “There are still people in abject poverty waiting for their compensation.”
© Hogan/Hogan Media/ShutterstockCollecting his award earlier in the evening, Spence said that the show wouldn’t have been made without ITV and the journalists who had covered the scandal.
He added that people such as Sir Alan Bates “demanded action with such rage” and that the airing of the drama proved the public “cannot abide liars and bullies”.
The hard-hitting drama about the Post Office scandal starred Toby Jones as subpostmaster Alan Bates, who was accused of fraud by the Post Office. He became an activist and made it his mission to get justice in a legal battle that took ten years and cost millions of pounds.
Toby starred alongside Monica Dolan, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Lia Williams, Alex Jennings, Ian Hart, Katherine Kelly, Shaun Dooley, Will Mellor, Clare Calbraith, Lesley Nicol, Amit Shah, and Adam James in the series.
What is Mr Bates vs The Post Office about?
The four-part series, which aired last year, tells the astonishing true story of hundreds of innocent subpostmasters working in the UK who were wrongly accused and later charged with theft, fraud, and false accounting thanks to a malfunctioning IT system. It’s one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
© ITV STUDIOSThe official synopsis continues: “Many of the wronged workers were prosecuted, some were imprisoned for crimes they never committed, and their lives were irreparably damaged by the scandal.”
Mr Bates vs The Post Office is available to stream on ITVX.
Read the full article here
