Mr Bates star on Post Office scandal: ‘We have to hold people accountable’

“Even watching it, I still shake my head going, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ and I’m in it.”

By Katelyn Mensah

Published: Thursday, 04 January 2024 at 12:28 PM

ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office tells the true story of the Post Office scandal, which is considered to be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history, and actor Will Mellor believes more people need to held accountable.

The four-part series explores how hundreds of subpostmasters and mistresses were falsely accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to an IT malfunction.

Will Mellor portrays Lee Castleton in the series, a subpostmaster from Yorkshire who was taken to court by the Post Office for missing funds, which led to him having to declare himself bankrupt.

Castleton was ordered to pay the Post Office more than £300,000, a figure that rose from the £20,000 that he was accused of stealing.

Will Mellor as Lee Castleton, sat down with other people
Will Mellor as Lee Castleton.
ITV

“There is more that needs to happen,” Mellor told RadioTimes.com. “They do get something, it’s not like they get nothing, but there is more that can be done. We have to hold people accountable for what they’ve done. And they’re pushing for more. They’re still fighting.

“How they [the Post Office] slept at night, I don’t know. It’s just unbelievable, a massive company like that. And the power of the Post Office, which I didn’t know until I did this, is they don’t need the police. They have their own policing system.

“That shows you that they stand on their own and that’s why they are as powerful as they are, why they got away with what they did.

“Even watching it, I still shake my head going, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ and I’m in it.”

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Speaking of his character, Mellor notes that his journey begins “angry”.

“‘I’m going to fight this, it will be all right, I’ll just tell the truth, I believe in the British justice system,’” he explained.

“You go from that to when he literally loses everything, and he’s a broken man, he breaks down and he’s apologising for something he hasn’t done, and then the days are hard.”

Mellor explained that he has played emotional characters in the past, but there was something different when it came to Castleton because “this is a real person, so it lands ever harder”.

In 2020, Tim Parker, then-chairman of the Post Office, said he was “sincerely sorry” on behalf of the company for its “historical failings”.

“Post Office is resetting its relationship with postmasters with reforms that prevent such past events ever happening again,” he added.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office is available to watch on ITVX. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guideto find out what’s on.

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