'Mr Bates vs the Post Office' Reaches Its Darkest Point as Lies Are Exposed

If you thought that Sam (Krupa Pattani) stabbing herself in Episode 2 was the darkest moment of the Mr Bates vs The Post Office saga, Episode 3 was here to prove you wrong. In the series's latest installment, based on the true story of Alan Bates and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance in England, Martin Griffiths (Colin Tierney) is the latest victim of The Post Office Horizon machine scandal. The Post Office holds Martin accountable for his post office getting robbed on top of windfalls from the machine. 

The pressure and lack of justice become so much for Martin, who we suspect was suffering from depression even before the robbery, and he walks in front of a bus to get away from it all. This is a true account of what happened in 2013. His injuries are too much to overcome, and eventually, his wife has to take him off life support.  

Martin's death ripples through the group. It fires up Alan to put fire under The Post Office's feet while Jo (Monica Dolan) and Lee (Will Mellor) are emotionally rocked by Martin's suicide, realizing how close they came to giving it all up. If you were looking for Martin's death to bring out the humanity in The Post Office though, you were unfortunately very mistaken. Not even a stirring performance from Lesley Nicol (who will always be our Mrs. Patmore) as the determined Pam Stubbs could convince The Post Office to act right. 

As we suspected last week, Paula Vennells (Lia Williams) did not come to Alan (Toby Jones) in good faith last week. She convinced Alan, who then convinced the alliance and Bob (Ian Hart) to trust The Post Office in a new mediation scheme that would help everyone get their money back, including people like Jo, who had already pleaded guilty to crimes they didn't commit. The mediation lasted for over a year before The Post Office revealed they had absolutely no intention of helping people like Jo or resolving any of the cases. 

Parliament then stepped in and ate Paula and Angela (Katherine Kelly) alive for obstructing Bob's investigation. It was very satisfying to watch Paula and Angela be interrogated, but public humiliation didn't do anything to move the case forward. Shortly after that, The Post Office brought the mediations "in-house" to make them "simpler." The result was that Alan and Bob were completely shut out from the investigation files and claims. Even having every alliance member submit requests for the files pertaining to their cases didn't lead to any new information.

If you think things couldn't get worse, buckle up. Amid the case going down the tubes, Suzanne (Julie Hesmondhaigh) is told that she has cancer. She has had surgery, which we hope has fixed the issue, but Alan volunteered to give up the fight to take care of her. Suzanne promptly told Alan to get himself together because she wasn't going to let cancer make the past decade and change of their lives mean nothing. So Alan stayed on the case, and finally, a stroke of luck showed up, but it came with conditions. 

After Jo and MP James Arbuthnot (Alex Jennings) went on Radio 4 to complain about The Post Office trying to shut down the case, Alan was called by a new solicitor, James Hartley (John Hollingworth), an expert in contract law. James felt sure they could raise the money to take The Post Office to court if Alan could find five hundred claimants to join the lawsuit. There were only 138 participants in the mediations, but Alan says he can definitely come up with the other 300 subpostmasters to join the lawsuit. We have no idea how he is going to do it. 

On top of that, Alan receives another mysterious phone call at the end of the episode. The man on the other end confirmed everything that Michael Rudkin (Shaun Dooley) told the alliance in Episode 2 about Fujitsu having a room of engineers who remotely accessed subpostmaster Horizon systems to fix bugs and other data problems, inevitably causing the errors that led to so many court cases and bankruptcies.

The mini-series has one hour left, and there is still so much to do. Alan must now find a viable way to verify the information he's been given about Fujitsu and find many more subpostmasters willing to take a stand against The Post Office. Only then can they take the case to court, and they still have to fight a British institution to get the justice that they deserve. We may know how this case ends, but we have no idea how Alan and the alliance will get there in such little time.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office continues on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on PBS, with new episodes available streaming on the PBS App and the PBS Prime Video Channel. As always, check your local listings.