ITV commissions companion documentary for Post Office scandal drama

UK commercial broadcaster ITV has commissioned a one-off documentary to accompany its four-part drama about the country’s Post Office scandal.

Jo Clinton-Davis

Little Gem, the coproduction partner with ITV Studios on People vs Post Office (4×60′), will also produce People vs Post Office: The Real Story (working title, 1×60′).

Both will be broadcast next year and will cover the scandal in which dozens of innocent Post Office workers were wrongly convicted of stealing money from their branches because of a defective IT system.

The documentary film has exclusive access to Alan Bates, the man who has campaigned for nearly 20 years to expose a scandal that is now described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

The doc will also talk to the sub-postmasters whose lives were wrecked by the scandal and who are featured in the ITV drama.

People vs Post Office was commissioned last year by Polly Hill, ITV’s head of drama.

It comes after ITV recently aired The Thief, His Wife & the Canoe: The Real Story, a documentary to accompany its drama about John Darwin, who faked his own death and then started a new life with his wife Anne in Panama.

Over a 14-year period, the Post Office accused hundreds of sub-postmasters of theft. Some were sent to prison, with more than 700 being given criminal convictions. The sub-post masters suffered financial ruin, severe mental and physical health problems and at least one took their own life.

After identifying a shortfall in his accounts and having had his contract terminated by the Post Office in 2003, Bates refused to accept the accounting errors were his. He suspected the Fujitsu-supplied computer system called Horizon was to blame. He began a campaign, bringing together hundreds of other sub-postmasters who had been affected.

In an epic David vs Goliath fight against a huge government-owned organisation, Bates took the Post Office to court and won. But his fight for justice and compensation for the victims of the scandal continues to this day.

The executive producers of People vs Post Office: The Real Story are Natasha Bondy and Ben Gale.

Jo Clinton-Davis, controller of factual at ITV, commissioned the film for ITV with Sue Murphy, head of factual entertainment.