It shouldn’t matter that Mr Bates vs the Post Office lost ITV money... but it does

The show has had an astonishing impact, forcing Britain’s sclerotic politicians into action and bringing justice closer for a small army of terribly maligned men and women, writes James Moore. It shows why there is such an urgent need to preserve this sort of public service broadcasting – despite losing ITV £1m

‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’, which stars Toby Jones, lost ITV around £1m (PA)

Some things are more important than money. Exhibit A: Mr Bates vs the Post Office.

Has there been a more impactful TV drama in the last 20 years?

The really astonishing thing about the jewel in the crown of ITV’s recent output – the broadcaster has trumpeted “the best start in six years” for its drama – is the sheer speed at which events moved on the back of it.

The prime minister was up on his feet, promising action within a matter of days. The Post Office scandal, which had largely been bubbling away under the radar, was suddenly catapulted into lead item status by news outlets. And there it has stayed.

Toby Jones and his co-stars added a bazooka to the arsenal of Alan Bates and the legion of criminally maligned sub postmasters and mistresses he leads. It has brought justice closer. It is not impossible that those behind the scandal, the people who knew their new IT system was wrongly tarring innocent people with accusations of fraud, may yet reap the whirlwind too (although I remain to be convinced – Britain is not good at bringing bad bosses to book).

Mr Bates is, in many ways, the very definition of public service broadcasting. But ITV is also a commercial organisation. It is a business that is required to make a profit, or it won’t be in business for very long. As such, its output has to wash its face. Mr Bates has not done that. Despite what was, by today’s standards, an excellent rating – it was ITV’s best performing drama since 2017, with some four million viewers watching the linear broadcast and racking up 13.5 million viewers in total – the channel’s director of television, Kevin Lygo, has said that it has lost the broadcaster about £1m.

Partly that is down to the economics of drama production, which have probably never been more challenging. Netflix and other streamers have come across the Atlantic and pumped money into making shows here. That is great news for the UK economy, and the creative sector in particular. However, the arrival of these deep-pocketed US companies has greatly increased the cost of hiring talent, even before the sudden inflationary shock, which we are still feeling the aftereffects of.

This doesn’t matter so much if you can make money on the back end by selling your output overseas. Trouble is, Mr Bates isn’t that short of show. As Mr Lygo stated: “If you’re in Lithuania, four hours on the British Post Office? Not really, thank you very much. So you can see the challenges here.”

A show like Vera, the long-running crime drama based in the North East starring Brenda Blethyn, is more the thing. It does wash its face. Handsomely, having been sold to 73 countries.

For all the good work that they do here – and the likes of Netflix, Apple, and Disney do produce some very high-quality work here – it tends to be that sort of show they are interested in.

A British Shogun – Disney’s sumptuously produced global smash? Sure. Perhaps you’d focus on the battles between Richard the Third and Henry Tudor, or maybe the English civil war. Swords, scheming and sex? We know that does good business. Country houses and the British class system? There’s a ready market for that too.

But the conviction of otherwise very ordinary (notwithstanding their extraordinarily resilience) sub postmasters, and their dogged battle for justice? Little people bringing down bosses seems like a good plot, but this is essentially a local affair. The same may be true of the infected blood scandal, another long-running British horror, which is also being turned into an ITV drama.

The company does have a public service obligation, and it has never made a profit on every hour of programming it puts out. Its news output would be a good example. But Mr Bates and its financial loss nonetheless serve to highlight how important it is to preserve the “public service” part of broadcasting – including what we might call public service drama.

Linear audiences, which offer the best margins, will inevitably continue to decline (with the exception of live sport, for obvious reasons). Then there is the way the BBC is funded, which is the subject of continuing debate, with some pushing a subscription model.

Then there is the media bill currently going through parliament, which aims, among other things, to preserve the visibility and prominence of domestic broadcasters on TV platforms. It ought to help some. But more is required if a Mr Bates about a future gross injustice is to get the go ahead, say, 10 years from now.

This is one of those things that can’t simply be left for the market to sort out. It is much too important for that.