In something of a turn-up for the PDFs, the first TV sensation of 2024 has sprung forth not from any of the increasingly bewildering plethora of streaming services, but from good old steam-powered ITV. Mr Bates vs the Post Office tells the story of the Post Office scandal of the 2000s/2010s (I’m guessing this was never christened “Postgate” because that name will always mean something altogether more benign to those of us who grew up with the Clangers and Bagpuss).
This, as you’ll know, concerned the fallout from the Post Office’s decision around the turn of the millennium to engage the computer multinational Fujitsu to automate all local post offices’ bookkeeping by installing an accounting system called Horizon.
It proved to be disastrously buggy, frequently ringing up spurious shortfalls. Rather than admit a fault in the system, the Post Office instead accused 700 innocent branch managers of embezzlement, leading to many false convictions, bankruptcies and at least one suicide.
Since all this came to light, there’s been a lack of enthusiasm with regard to actually prosecuting anyone from the Post Office’s higher echelons or Fujitsu. But since the broadcast of the ITV drama, we’ve seen a flurry of activity, with renewed pledges by the Met to get some heads up on spikes.
So, it would appear that it’s not truth or justice, but a high-profile TV series that’s required to overcome the disinclination of the State to investigate and correct its own misdeeds. With this in mind, here are some more unresolved scandals that could be turned into TV dramas…
THE NIGHTINGALE HOSPITALS
Remember these? They’ve been rather overshadowed by the vastness of the PPE scandal and the unbearable grisliness of so much that’s come out about just how utterly our wise leaders soiled the bed during the Covid pandemic, but cast your minds back.
About £220m was spent designating and equipping seven emergency pop-up hospitals around the country which then lay empty for the duration of the crisis before being decommissioned (at a cost of a further £300m), partly because they weren’t up to standard, but mainly because the already critically overstretched NHS simply didn’t have the manpower to staff them…
Plot-wise this sounds like something Armando Iannucci might relish and I see Nicolas Cage as Matt Hancock – he’s got the hairline, for a start.
THE JENNIFER ARCURI AFFAIR
I know Boris Johnson seems to spend his life in the epicentre of a whirlwind of debauchery to the extent that it’s hard to distinguish one disastrous dalliance from another, but there was some proper misconduct meat on the kiss ’n’ tell bones of this particular liaison, with the question of £120,000 of public money having been funnelled to Ms Arcuri while she was giving Boris the sort of “IT lessons” which required dry-cleaning the sofa covers afterwards…
Casting-wise, the US comic actress Anna Faris bears a strong resemblance to Ms Arcuri and can probably relate to the subject matter, her marriage to Jurassic Chris Pratt not having ended especially happily. And as for Boris himself… let’s face it, Matt Lucas is going to play him sooner or later, so why not now?
DAVID CAMERON AND GREENSILL CAPITAL
I’ll be honest; I’d like to see this one dramatised if only to help ME understand it as I’m not entirely sure what was going on here myself. Suffice to say that Call Me Lord Dave’s political resurrection late last year has also stirred memories of his involvement, post-premiership, with lobbying on behalf of the finance company, which was judged to have been just about within the letter if not exactly the spirit of the rules of parliament, and ended with him coming out about £3m richer even though the firm itself went under. Yeah, me neither.
We need Christopher Nolan on screenwriting duties to make sense of this I reckon, and for Dave himself, Rory Kinnear already played a very Cameronian PM in that eerily prescient Black Mirror episode (oink oink) a few years back, so…
THE GOLDEN WALLPAPER SAGA
This is another one that ended on a bit of a cliffhanger; just who WAS it who paid for the £800-a-roll wallpaper which was such a central feature of Boris & Carrie’s refurb of No 10? Or indeed the rest of the decor and furnishings? Or Boris’s holidays to Mustique? Or the £3.8m manor house in Oxfordshire he bought last year?
There’s probably a 10-episode mini-series in this. Maybe get the Game of Thrones guys in to write it, get Matt Lucas back as Boris and I don’t know, Keira Knightley as Carrie? She’d have to posh it up a bit, mind you.
POEM OF THE WEEK
So here we are again, old friends
It’s 2024
We’re holding out for better days
Just like we have before
So many, many, many times
And all to no avail
Just when we think things can’t get worse
They get worse, without fail
But this is an election year
Well, almost certainly
(Technically I know they can
Cling on till January)
Is this at last a time to show
Some tenuous optimism?
Does the future look a little brighter
When seen through this prism?
But soft, the Gods are listening
And hubris is a thing
They’re always thinking up
Some fresh catastrophes to bring
Down on our heads, so hush your mouth
And gird your heart and soul
While we await our chance to – what’s the phrase?
Yes – “Take back control”…
