The four-parter, as well as featuring a cast<\/a> full of stellar acting talent, tells the story<\/a> of one of the \u201cgreatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history\u201d.<\/p>\n The series chronicles the events that took place between 2000 and 2015, when the Post Office held thousands of its own subpostmasters and postmistresses liable for financial discrepancies thrown up a defective IT system.<\/p>\n They were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting<\/a>, with the drama diving into the events of 2009 when a group of subpostmasters from across the UK decided to form the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance.<\/p>\n Starring as Paula Vennells, the Post Office CEO at the time the scandal erupted, Lia Williams spoke to ITV about the way her character was approached, and how they went about incorporating the written trial transcripts into the drama.<\/p>\n Williams said: \u201cMy understanding is that the writer, Gwyn [Hughes], had to deal with Paula very carefully, because there were lawyers all over it.<\/p>\n \u201cSo the part that I played was mainly transcripts, pulled from emails and quotes directly onto the page.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was only a certain amount of interpretation I was allowed, and for an actor, that\u2019s so difficult \u2013 because we don\u2019t speak in the same way that we write an email or text. So I had to try and make the written transcript sound as if it belonged in her mouth.\u201d<\/p> She continued: \u201cOn the other hand, I did feel that she kept having to lapse into \u2018corporate speak\u2019 to deal with that fear, because that\u2019s all she knew.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as she had facts and figures and numbers in front of her, she was fine. The moment she went off script, as it were, she was struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking about the creative decisions made by bringing this real-life tale to life on screen, executive producer Joe Williams also said: \u201cWe did have to be careful. But we were helped by the fact that there have been two High Court judgments<\/a>, which helped us a lot.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s also been a lot of brilliant work done to bring freedom of information requests out that give us small glimpses into what was going on in the Post Office boardroom \u2014 the scenes that you see in the drama that feature those are often drawn from FOI requests of redacted minutes that we\u2019ve received.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot more will come out as the Public Inquiry happens, but those were our basis, so that we felt we were on a solid grounding.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2020<\/a>, Tim Parker, then-chairman of the Post Office, said he was \u201csincerely sorry\u201d on behalf of the company for its \u201chistorical failings\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cPost Office is resetting its relationship with postmasters with reforms that prevent such past events ever happening again,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n As well as Williams starring in the new series, the cast is led by Toby Jones, Monica Dolan, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Lia Williams and Alex Jennings.<\/p>\n Other cast members also include Ian Hart, Katherine Kelly, Shaun Dooley, Will Mellor, Clare Calbraith, Lesley Nicol, Amit Shah and Adam James.<\/p>\n Mr Bates vs The Post Office will air at 9pm on ITV1 across three nights beginning on Monday 1st January.<\/strong><\/p>\n For more, check out our dedicated Drama<\/a>\u00a0page or our full\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Streaming Guide<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only \u00a310 \u2013\u00a0subscribe now<\/a>. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to\u00a0The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Lia Williams portrays Post Office CEO Paula Vennells in the hard-hitting new ITV drama. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":42819,"template":"","categories":[1,5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/01\/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-star-on-how-legal-risks-impacted-script-scaled.jpg",2560,1707,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/01\/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-star-on-how-legal-risks-impacted-script-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/01\/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-star-on-how-legal-risks-impacted-script-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/01\/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-star-on-how-legal-risks-impacted-script-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/01\/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-star-on-how-legal-risks-impacted-script-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/01\/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-star-on-how-legal-risks-impacted-script-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/01\/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-star-on-how-legal-risks-impacted-script-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Lia Williams portrays Post Office CEO Paula Vennells in the hard-hitting new ITV drama.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/42818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Amit](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/12\/mrbatesvsthepostoffice01-6041f5c.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"mr_bates_vs_the_post_office_01\\"\/")
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