Mr Bates Vs the Post Office is finally available in the US streaming on PBS Passport and Apple TV, and probably elsewhere.
I remembered this because I referenced it after reading about it. It’s about the injustice to post office workers in the UK because of a faulty computer system called Horizon IT that was found to have contained “hundreds” of bugs. And the tv series based on it was very well received in the UK.
I first heard about this story from Charles Arthur who wrote in January 2024 that he was wondering why his friends were “so exercised about this” years after the scandalous injustice had taken place, and it was because they had watched this “four-part dramatisation of the events in the case” and were, he described, “incandescent about what had happened: the people who had lost reputations, livelihoods, their freedom, in some cases who had taken their lives” because of what happened.
What interested me about this UK case was this part of what Charles Arthur reported:
“Why does it take a TV dramatisation in the quiet period of the year to get everyone worked up? And make no mistake, people are really worked up about this since the broadcast. Every MP and minister, right up to the Prime Minister, has been required to have an Earnest Quote about making sure that Things Are Put Right As Soon As Possible. There’s discussion about passing a law that would exonerate all the people who were convicted. You’d think the government was being assailed by people with cattle prods.”
That interests me. A good storytelling sparking outrage can really get people to act and demand better, and representatives in government behaving like cattle prods are imminent is something that interests me very much.
Charles Arthur explained it very well:
“The manifest unfairness of believing a computer system over hundreds of people who had never given any cause for suspicion in the past infuriated them”
This is the hinge to hang a story on – unfairness is almost universally deplored, especially if one has even a mild copacetic regard for the maligned or mistreated.
I don’t have the same expectations for the HBO (Max?) movie “Mountainhead” which Gil Duran described as potentially helping to move the network state concept “from fringe manifesto to cultural touchstone”.
And not everyone’s going to be as livid and spurred to action as I am from getting a reply to my letter on cryptocurrency from Rep. Rob Bresnahan that sounds like crypto marketing material written by a chatbot that mentioned “exciting opportunities” and used the word “innovation” twice in 3 paragraphs. (Innovation isn’t my favourite word.)
