'Mr Bates vs The Post Office didn't change the law – the people of Britain did'
"That wasn't us, that was Great Britain, that was the United Kingdom. That was the best of all of us."
Mr Bates vs The Post Office became a talking point among everyone when it was released at the beginning of this year, and no one could have predicted the heights it went to – re-energising the fight to get justice for those wrongly prosecuted during the Post Office scandal.
Over several years, more than 900 subpostmasters were wrongly accused and prosecuted of theft, fraud and false accounting due to the defective Horizon IT system. People's livelihoods were ruined and it was Alan Bates who took the Post Office to court in order to get justice.
The four-part series shone a light on an issue that turned many people's lives upside down, and it got Britain talking and soon the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the government would bring in a new law to "swiftly exonerate and compensate victims".
With its tenacious storytelling and success with critics and audiences alike, it is no surprise the series has topped this year's Radio Times' TV 100 list.
"I think we all feel incredibly proud to be British, when we watched the way, you know – all we did was we made a TV drama, and it made people angry," producer Patrick Spence told RadioTimes.com about the impact of the series.
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He continued: "What the people of this country did was they rose up as one and demanded of the Prime Minister that he take action. That wasn't us, that was Great Britain, that was the United Kingdom. That was the best of all of us. Standing up and saying, 'Enough already, you've got to do something about this.' And that made us very proud to be a small part of that."
As Spencer noted, the series sparked something with the British public, which led to hundreds of thousands of people signing a petition, calling for ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells to be stripped of her CBE.
It was under Vennell's leadership that the Post Office wrongly prosecuted hundreds of its employees and she has since returned her CBE.
"I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to the subpostmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system," she said in a statement.
The series itself broke records for ITV and became the most watched programme of 2024 so far and ITV's biggest new drama in over a decade, something show bosses did not expect.
Polly Hill, the ITV commissioner behind the drama, told RadioTimes.com: "I did think it would get a lot of interest from the press and I hoped of course that it would find an audience as it was a brilliant telling of the story, but we could never have imagined the attention we got.
"Although I'm not surprised the drama made the nation angry because it's a story that shocked and angered everyone who came on board. We are all really proud of what our drama has helped achieve. It shouldn't have taken a drama to make the government take action, but we are proud that our drama has done so much good."
Just over a week after the show premiered on ITV1 and ITVX, the first episode of the four-parter had already been watched by 10.9 million viewers, with the series averaging 9.8 million across all four episodes.
Spence echoed Hill's thoughts that it shouldn't have taken a drama for people to pay attention to the wrongdoings.
He explained: "I'm very, very proud of the team who all excelled in their various ways. I'm also very proud of the role that drama has played. A lot of people said, 'Isn't it awful that it took a drama to to get people to pay attention?'
"And my attitude is now, 'Isn't it brilliant? That drama can have that effect.' And let's hope it happens again. And let's hope that it further renews everyone's enthusiasm for investing in drama as a cultural form, because it's shown what it can achieve."
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