topic Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office in TV and Movies

PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

nwbabs — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 00:57:10 GMT

Watched the first episode of Mr. Bates vs The Post Office on PBS this afternoon. Apparently there are four episodes in the series. So far, so good for this Masterpiece offering.

As usual, a very good cast and nice slices of life in small English villages.

Anyone else watch it yet?

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Love my grandkids — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 01:18:38 GMT

@nwbabs This was recommended on the DA FB page I'm active on. I recorded it and have the series set to record but haven't watched it yet. The true story this is based on is fascinating.

Love that Lesley Nichol, Mrs. Patmore in DA, is in it.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Bookplate — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 01:22:16 GMT

I binged all four episodes already on Passport. What an absolute outrage that was. If this story doesn't make you furious you are not paying attention! I was glad to read that this dramatization of the gross miscarriage of justice has had a positive outcome in raising awareness and and forcing more resolutions.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

nwbabs — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 01:48:28 GMT

Excellent @Love my grandkids glad to know others will be watching too. Agree, the true story is fascinating. I can totally understand why these subcontractors in small villages could become so befuddled by some new fangled computer system for starters.

I so enjoyed DA and had an opportunity to tour Highclere Castle many years ago. What a treat! Loved the Mrs Patmore character and what a performance Leslie Nicol gave in the series.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

azgal — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 01:37:28 GMT

I watched it and liked it. I'm looking forward to seeing the series.

I hope it's ok if I recommend another movie that is a little like this. It's The Bank Of Dave on Netflix. It's about a man who wants to start a bank in his small English town to help the people in the town. The English banking system tried all kinds of dirty tricks to stop him.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Bookplate — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 01:39:07 GMT

@azgal wrote:
I watched it and liked it. I'm looking forward to seeing the series.

I hope it's ok if I recommend another movie that is a little like this. It's The Bank Of Dave on Netflix. It's about a man who wants to start a bank in his small English town to help the people in the town. The English banking system tried all kinds of dirty tricks to stop him.

I thought it was charming! Also a true story, but a much happier one.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

nwbabs — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 01:47:39 GMT

@Bookplate Absolutely. Did a bit of reading and apparently they are still dragging on the compensating and exonerating of individuals.

I vacillate on getting Passport. Once I drop a few other hobbies (while I can still do them), PBS binging with Passport will rise to the top. LOL

@Bookplate wrote

I binged all four episodes already on Passport. What an absolute outrage that was. If this story doesn't make you furious you are not paying attention! I was glad to read that this dramatization of the gross miscarriage of justice has had a positive outcome in raising awareness and and forcing more resolutions.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Puggywuggy — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 01:54:46 GMT

I hadn't heard anything about it so I am glad I clicked on this thread!! Thank you for mentioning this PBS series. I will be looking forward to seeing it.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

nwbabs — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 02:00:01 GMT

Wonderful and thank you @azgal for the Bank of Dave recommendation, I'll add it to my on-going list. Looks like a strong cast with Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) and Naomi Battrick (Jamestown) to name a few.

Thanks again!

@azgal wrote:
I watched it and liked it. I'm looking forward to seeing the series.

I hope it's ok if I recommend another movie that is a little like this. It's The Bank Of Dave on Netflix. It's about a man who wants to start a bank in his small English town to help the people in the town. The English banking system tried all kinds of dirty tricks to stop him.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Teddixat — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 02:04:37 GMT

@azgal I loved Bank of Dave. Delightful. I only saw the second episode of Mr, Bates v. post office but I've set to record the rest and I found the first episode on demand. What a great show. I was outraged at what these families went through

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

AZfem — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 02:23:02 GMT

I'm so disappointed PBS is showing almost no classic shows like "Poldark", " I Claudius", "Downton". I have no interest in these contemporary shows & that's all they're showing. I want classics back!

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Venezia — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 02:39:39 GMT

@AZfem - Sign up for Passport and you should be able to watch what you want on demand.

I've been a monthly supporter of PBS (i.e. a Passport member) for years and I appreciate them showing newer series.

Especially something as important as this latest "Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office". What happened is a total disgrace and without it being brought to the tv screen, these wrongly accused postal workers would still be no nearer to clearing their names or being compensated.

And even now they are still fighting for justice. The PTB that covered it up for years would still be doing that and ruining innocent people's lives. (Unfortunately, it can't help those who committed suicide over it.)

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

AZfem — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 03:02:52 GMT

@Venezia I don't need passport as there's nothing I want to watch. I have the channel on my streaming service as well as the app downloaded. I would like to see NEW classic productions. They have almost none anymore.

I can't take all the accents in the hard to understand newer shows. I know I can put closed caption on but don't think I should have to go to so much effort to understand actors. I look fondly on the days of clear speaking theater trained Brits - Olivier, Gielgud, O'Toole, Harris, Burton, Quayle, etc.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

DSD2 — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 03:40:02 GMT

Yes, I watched it. It was fascinating and deeply disturbing...

I'm anxious to see the rest of the series. Well acted and such a gripping storyline. Like so many other real life events, it sounds too far fetched to be true!! But it was all too real...

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

occasionalrain — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 03:57:34 GMT

@Venezia As long as PBS edits shows like Poldark by 10/20 minutes, depriving US viewers of entire scenes, they will not get a donation from me.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Spacrazy — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 04:16:03 GMT

@nwbabs Yes, I did watch it last night ~ I don't know how I happened onto that channel at that time but I love when a happy little accident works out well. Hahaha

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Major Shopper — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 12:11:07 GMT

@nwbabs This is such a good show!

Also like Alice and Jack on Masterpiece which comes on (in my area) after Mr. Bates vs The Post Office.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

nwbabs — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 15:56:21 GMT

@Major Shopper I did enjoy Alice and Jack too. I was not sure if I would enjoy the series as predictable love stories are not my usual viewing preference. Fortunately, the storyline revealed a relationship with a myriad of layers and complications.

@Major Shopper wrote:
@nwbabs This is such a good show!

Also like Alice and Jack on Masterpiece which comes on (in my area) after Mr. Bates vs The Post Office.

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Bookplate — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 16:47:43 GMT

I subscribe to email newsletters from Masterpiece, and this is the text of their Inside Episode 1 mailer received today. It may clear up a few issues for American viewers.

In the first stunning installment of Mr Bates vs The Post Office, baffling financial losses in local post office branches cause Subpostmasters to be fired and prosecuted. There’s a lot for audiences to digest, so allow us to provide more detail and context around questions like ‘How do local post offices operate in the UK?’ ‘What was the experience of branch managers calling the Horizon helpline?’ And ‘How did Jo Hamilton’s village support her?’ [Contains spoilers.]

In Episode 1, we see Alan Bates locked in a postal booth within a general store. We then meet Jo Hamilton, who combines her postal duties with running a bakery. What’s going on here?

Unlike the US federal postal system, Britain’s Post Office is a state-owned private company. Self-employed branch managers (or Subpostmasters) work for, and are under contract with, the Post Office. These local branches are at the very heart of their communities and often a social hub, offering a range of postal, government, and financial services like administering pension checks and social security, helping individuals obtain driver’s licenses and passports, providing banking services to small local businesses, and accepting parcels for delivery.The Post Office UK “ensures 99.7% of the population lives within 3 miles of a post office and 93% live within 1 mile,” according to its official website. “We do this nearly entirely on a franchise basis in partnership with independent business owners who operate post offices.”

The entirely separate Royal Mail does all the delivering of letters and parcels to millions of addresses across the United Kingdom six days a week

A Subpostmistress sees her online shortfall double while taking advice from the Horizon support line in Episode 1. Another branch manager is on his 91st call to Horizon only to hear his problem addressed with “You’re the only one.” How was Horizon initially rolled out and what support did postal branch managers get from helpline agents?

Horizon was introduced in 1999 to replace mainly paper-based accounting practices in local post offices. In the documentary The Real Story of Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which will air on MASTERPIECE on Sunday, April 28th at 11pm ET and again on Sunday, May 5th at 7pm ET, the real Jo Hamilton says, “An engineer arrived. He screwed [the Horizon terminal] on the desk. I asked him what it was, and he goes, ‘That’s Horizon. It’s going live shortly. You’ll hear all about it.’”

The launch “to 13,000 busy, non-technical Subpostmasters was hasty, and training was inadequate for the scale of the transformation in the workflows involved,” reports The Guardian (UK). A former Horizon helpline agent tells Computer Weekly (UK) he was often on the phone with someone who had little or no IT knowledge. “A lot of Subpostmasters had worked in their branches for decades and had not even been around a personal computer. … [They] were always quite frantic, so stressed, asking, ‘How have I got this figure? How am I going to reconcile this account?’”

We were much happier to push down on the Subpostmasters and say, ‘it’s your issue’ than to push it upwards and ask…why we are having so many calls about this?” says the Horizon agent.

Jo Hamilton anticipates police arrest in Episode 1, but her solicitor informs her that the British Post Office has the right to run its own criminal investigations and has done so for over 300 years.

Indeed, the Post Office Investigation Branch (IB) is the “oldest recognized criminal investigations force in the world,” according to The Postal Museum (UK). “For more than 335 years it has worked to detect offenses against the post and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.” Along with looking into supposed misdeeds by the public, the IB also probes alleged offenses by postal staff, including working undercover to do so. Today, both the Post Office and Royal Mail still operate their own security and investigative teams, though the IB’s work is being reexamined in light of the Subpostmaster scandal.

It’s an affecting moment when Subpostmistress Jo Hamilton arrives in court to find her Hampshire neighbors there to support her with a standing ovation. Turns out they did more than that.

Instead of going to trial for theft, Hamilton agreed to a plea bargain—accepting a lesser charge of false accounting and agreeing to repay her supposed £36,000 shortfall. In the documentary The Real Story of Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Hamilton says she could only raise £30,000 from her house. She called a village meeting. “I had to explain to everybody that I was in trouble with the Post Office.” While Hamilton assumed people would think she’d stolen the missing funds, they demonstrated remarkable trust in their Subpostmistress. “Someone put up a hand and said, ‘Well, couldn’t Jo have an early Christmas present?’” she says. Together, her neighbors contributed her remaining balance.

Hamilton was later “supported at her sentencing in court by 74 people from her local community, including the vicar who spoke on her behalf,” according to the legal firm representing the Subpostmasters. “The community also raised more than £6,000 towards the money she had to pay to the Post Office.”

Re: PBS - Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Venezia — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 18:02:20 GMT

@occasionalrain - Well, to be honest, PBS is a non-profit, publicly-funded organization that depends on donations.

I'm happy to do that, as we watch PBS all the time. If they have to edit formats, for whatever reason, I can live with that.

I can always watch the shows I like (in full format) by paying a subscription to other streaming services or buying the DVDs.

But for those who have never supported PBS and won't, it's not like they're losing anything. They do what they can, with the funding they have. If they had more donations, perhaps they wouldn't have to edit anything.

Anyone can watch PBS for free. Perhaps they should change that?