Alan Bates (Toby Jones) is one of the pillars of his community as head of a post office in Llandudno in North Wales. He considers himself an honest person but the Post Office tells him that the numbers in his office do not add up. He suspects that it is a computer error but the state company claims that he is the only one who claims to have problems with the system and that he has to return the money.
Since he cannot prove his innocence, the Post Office crushes him like a cockroach: it accuses him of fraud, theft and false accounting, and Mr. Bates loses everything. However, as the years go by, he discovers that it was not an isolated case: others who ran an office like him have also been bankrupted, sued and even imprisoned for missing money they never saw.
Mr Bates against Correos, which Movistar Plus premieres on May 21, is a story of David against Goliath focused on the two decades in which hundreds of businessmen were victims of the Post Office. They had to fight to recover their reputation with their finances hit to death, judicially abused by a state company with all the cards in its hands and without an iota of empathy or transparency in the face of their complaints about the malfunction of the Horizon software with which they worked. .
More than ten million Britons were waiting to see the resolution of the four-episode drama, which brought one of the most outrageous scandals in British society to the public.
Screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes is respectful of the material: she understands that her work has a journalistic function, of denouncing reality. Mr. Bates, in this sense, offers a calm figure to lead both the defendants and the public.
At the same time, the creator knows how to take advantage of fiction: she dramatizes a few affected people to humanize them, allows us to get nervous about the injustices they suffer (ensuring that the magnitude of the tragedy is understood), and directs the narrative towards the hope of a victory after overcoming the circumstances.
There are scenes that are especially hard to watch, like Monica Dolan trembling because she doesn’t understand how she is supposed to be robbing the Post Office if, to balance the finances, she can even lose the house. In her nerves is all the frustration and vulnerability of the ordinary citizen.
It is unexpected that in the face of a title as conventional as Mr Bates against the Post Office (which even sounds like a sitcom) and with an a priori plot as bureaucratic as a case against the postal service, a story so emotional, committed, with rhythm and well told is hidden.
There is nothing like watching a series that directly challenges the viewer by showing anonymous people being direct and gratuitous victims of the system that is supposed to protect them.