Victory is Bittersweet in 'Mr Bates vs the Post Office' Finale

Mr. Bates (Toby Jones) and the subpostmasters' alliance finally got their day in court in the finale episode of Mr Bates vs the Post Office. While it was a big step forward, it wasn't the resounding victory you'd expect from a show that set Downton Abbey-level viewership records in the U.K. at the start of the year.

Fifteen years after the inaugural meeting of the alliance, Mr. Bates and his comrades rounded up the 500 subpostmasters they needed to take the Post Office to court. If fans were expecting the court case to be American legal-show level of drama, or even Mr Bates Episode 2 levels of drama, they didn't find it here. After almost two decades of research gathering and telling their stories to anyone who would listen, the subpostmasters and their lawyers were ready for everything The Post Office threw at them. Even The Post Office's own witnesses were winners for the subpostmasters.

So this should have been a slam dunk, right? They unequivocally won the court case, but they were still pressured to settle with The Post Office because they ran out of money to fight the case through numerous technicalities. Again, they won. The subpostmasters were awarded 58 million pounds, but after paying their lawyers and the donors that got the case off the ground in the first place, the subpostmasters were only left with 12 million pounds to split between over five hundred people. That rounds out to about £20 thousand each, which didn't cover the savings most of them had lost in their respective battles with The Post Office.