'Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office' Trailer Promises A David vs Goliath Tale

The incredible true story behind Masterpiece's Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office is one that Americans won't be familiar with, but PBS viewers shouldn't feel too bad, as it's one that British viewers weren't that familiar with either until the series premiered in January 2024 on ITV. The tale begins at the end of the 1990s, when digitalization first began sweeping through government, as the internet and the computer revolution took hold.

In 1999, the British postal service contracted with the Japanese company Fujitsu to start using their accounting software, Horizon Systems. From the outset, the system was faulty and riddled with errors. Created for the Japanese Yen and the American dollar, it struggled to handle the British sterling system. As early as 1999, sub-postmasters were reporting the system was erroneously reporting monetary shortfalls all over the postal system where there were none, only to have their complaints dismissed.

The dismissal of those complaints was the tip of the iceberg of issues. Trusting machine over man, the postal service heads began recording shortfalls that didn't exist and blaming the sub-postmasters in charge for the supposed defaults, accusing them of skiing off the top, defrauding the government, and mail theft, all of which are felonies. Stunned, these lowly paid workers found themselves charged, assumed guilty, forced to pay back thousands of pounds they never took (and indeed that were never missing in the first place), thrown in jail, and their lives ruined, all because the British government refused to consider the machines they'd paid for were at fault.