---
title: "Mr Bates vs The Post Office"
year: 2024
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office"
fi1m_id: "mr-bates-vs-the-post-office"
imdb_id: "tt27867155"
tmdb_id: 241100
wikidata_id: "Q123690397"
fi1m_score: 80
critics_reviews: 3
published: "2026-10-01T00:01:59.471600+00:00"
updated: "2026-10-01T00:02:17.795858+00:00"
region: "AT"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Mr Bates vs The Post Office (2024)

Created by James Strong · Drama

## Identity

Mr Bates vs The Post Office

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office
- **Type:** Series
- **Fi1m ID:** mr-bates-vs-the-post-office
- **IMDb ID:** tt27867155
- **TMDB ID:** 241100
- **Wikidata ID:** Q123690397
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27867155/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/241100, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q123690397

**Fi1m score: 80** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* Four hours of ordinary people being told the computer cannot be wrong, and the computer being wrong

> Gwyneth Hughes’s four-part account of the Post Office scandal is plain, angry television that trusts its story and its cast, and it is right to. The executives are sketched where the postmasters are drawn, but Toby Jones and Monica Dolan carry it.

## Synopsis

It is 2003 in Llandudno, north Wales, and Alan Bates (Toby Jones), who runs the local post office with his partner Suzanne Sercombe (Julie Hesmondhalgh), refuses to make good a shortfall that the Horizon computer system says is his. The Post Office takes his branch. In South Warnborough, Hampshire, Jo Hamilton (Monica Dolan) watches a deficit double on her screen while a helpline tells her nobody else has this problem. In Bridlington, Lee Castleton (Will Mellor) and his wife Lisa (Amy Nuttall) decide to contest a claim for money they never took. Bates begins writing letters, keeping copies and looking for others like him. A meeting in a village hall in Fenny Compton brings a room full of strangers together, and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance begins.

## Review

Gwyneth Hughes’s four-part drama, directed by James Strong and first shown on 1 January 2024, tells the story of the Post Office scandal from behind the counter. Hundreds of sub-postmasters were accused of theft on the evidence of a computer system called Horizon, and many were prosecuted, bankrupted or sent to prison. Hughes does not begin with the numbers. She begins with a man in Llandudno who will not sign for money he has not lost, and she stays with people like him for four hours. It is plain, angry television and it is right to be, and we recommend it with one caveat we will come to.

Toby Jones plays Alan Bates as a man whose weapon is a filing cabinet. He does not shout. He keeps copies. When the Post Office writes to him he writes back, and when it stops writing he keeps writing anyway, and Jones makes the stubbornness look like a kind of tiredness rather than heroism, which is the right call. Julie Hesmondhalgh, as his partner Suzanne Sercombe, is given the job of living with this, and she does it with a raised eyebrow and a kettle. Their spare room, dressed by production designer Antonia Lowe with box files climbing the walls, tells you more about years of campaigning than any speech could.

The scene that made us angry comes early and belongs to Monica Dolan. Jo Hamilton, who runs the post office in South Warnborough, Hampshire, rings the helpline about a shortfall she cannot explain. The voice at the other end tells her to press a key. She presses it and the figure on her screen doubles. Dolan plays it without tears, just a woman looking at a number and understanding that nobody is going to help her, and we sat with our jaw set for the rest of the hour. We knew roughly how this story went, and the drama still got under us, because Hughes shows the mechanism at the scale of one kitchen and one screen.

Will Mellor and Amy Nuttall, as Lee and Lisa Castleton in Bridlington, carry the strand about what happens when you decide to fight, and Mellor’s decency is the series’ quietest asset. Shaun Dooley, as Michael Rudkin, is given the one thread that plays like a thriller. Ian Hart’s Bob Rutherford, a forensic accountant, arrives partly to explain the technology to the postmasters and mostly to explain it to us, and Hart is good enough that we forgave the function.

Matt Gray shoots the branches as they are: cramped, over-lit, a queue for stamps and a screen that will not add up. The Post Office’s own offices are glass, pale wood and long tables, and the cutting between the two places does the arguing. Nobody has been clever with the camera, and we do not think anybody should have been. This is television that wants you to hear what is said and see who said it.

The caveat is the other side of the counter. Lia Williams plays Paula Vennells, the chief executive, and is given a smile, a lanyard and little else to do with them. Katherine Kelly’s Angela van den Bogerd is smooth in meetings, and that is the whole of her. Hughes has drawn her postmasters in three dimensions and her executives in one, and while history may have done the same, drama has more room than history. There is also a habit of ending scenes on the line that tells you what you have just felt, and Alex Jennings’s James Arbuthnot, the MP who takes up the cause, is allowed to be decent without ever being interesting.

Set beside the campaigning dramas it descends from, *Cathy Come Home* in 1966 or *Hillsborough* in 1996, it is less inventive than either, and it works. It does the old thing well: it puts a face to a name in a newspaper and makes you sit with it. How the story ends is a matter of public record and we will not rehearse it here.

Watch it in two sittings rather than four. The anger builds better without a night’s sleep between episodes, and there are people in it you will want to check on.

*Fi1m score 80, published 1 October 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is Mr Bates vs The Post Office worth watching?**

*Mr Bates vs The Post Office* is worth watching for anyone with an evening or two to spare for a plain, angry account of the Post Office scandal, and we scored it 80. Toby Jones and Monica Dolan carry it, and the postmasters are drawn in full where the executives are only sketched. Watch it in two sittings rather than four.

**Where can I watch Mr Bates vs The Post Office in Austria?**

*Mr Bates vs The Post Office* is not on any streaming or rental service in Austria at the moment. It is available in 4 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

**How does Mr Bates vs The Post Office compare to Erin Brockovich?**

*Mr Bates vs The Post Office* and [*Erin Brockovich*](https://film.one/film/erin-brockovich) tell the same kind of story: one stubborn person, a filing cabinet and a company that assumed nobody would read the paperwork. The British series is the plainer and angrier of the two, built on a cast of ordinary people rather than a single star turn. Soderbergh's film is the more polished and the more predictable, and the better choice if you want one evening rather than four hours.

### Reviews we read (3)

- **Evening Standard**, Martin Robinson (85/100, inferred): Robinson calls the drama essential viewing, finding its account of the scandal harrowing and gripping. He particularly praises the performances for humanising the victims’ bewildering ordeal. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-itv-review-toby-jones-scandal-b1129362.html)
- **The Guardian**, Rebecca Nicholson (80/100, inferred): Nicholson finds the drama powerful and deeply affecting, despite occasional broad-brush storytelling. She especially praises the ensemble cast for making the scandal’s human cost vivid. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/jan/01/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-review-toby-jones-is-perfect-in-a-devastating-tale-of-a-national-scandal)
- **The i Paper**, Gerard Gilbert (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the drama stirring and emotionally affecting, with its account of the scandal likely to provoke anger and pity. Toby Jones’s portrayal of Alan Bates is singled out for its quiet, determined conviction. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-review-blood-boiled-2826984?ico=most_popular)

## Details

- **Created by:** James Strong
- **Creator:** James Strong
- **Director:** James Strong
- **Writer:** Gwyneth Hughes
- **Cinematography:** Matt Gray
- **Production design:** Antonia Lowe
- **Producer:** Chris Clough
- **Cast:** Toby Jones as Alan Bates; Julie Hesmondhalgh as Suzanne Sercombe; Monica Dolan as Jo Hamilton; Shaun Dooley as Michael Rudkin; Ian Hart as Bob Rutherford; Lia Williams as Paula Vennells; Will Mellor as Lee Castleton; Amy Nuttall as Lisa Castleton
- **Release (Austria):** 1 January 2024
- **Genres:** Drama
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPkvYXufpAY

## Where to watch in Austria

Not streaming, renting or buying in Austria at the last check.

Also available in: AU, CA, GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Hillsborough* (1996): Jimmy McGovern’s account of the disaster and its cover-up; the template for this kind of drama.
- *Erin Brockovich* (2000), Fi1m 78: One stubborn person, a filing cabinet and a company that thought nobody would read the paperwork. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/erin-brockovich.md)
- *Dark Waters* (2019): Todd Haynes’s slow, grey lawsuit film; institutional lying at the pace it actually happens.
- *Chernobyl* (2019): A system that cannot admit error, and the people who pay for it; colder and larger.
- *Three Girls* (2017): British drama about victims nobody believed, told with the same plainness and more anger.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office