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Toby Jones is starring in the new ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, depicting one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
In 2000 and 2015, hundreds of innocent subpostmasters and postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to a defective IT system and, as a result, many of them were prosecuted and imprisoned for crimes they never committed.
Of those affected by the faulty IT system, 736 were prosecuted, hundreds more lost livelihoods, homes and life savings after paying back money that the Post Office claimed was missing.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office is set in 2009 and tells the story of a group of subpostmasters who decided enough was enough and formed the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance to fight back.
Toby plays a man called Alan Bates, who was a core part of this group and is still fighting for justice today.
Speaking on the Graham Norton Show about the scandal, Toby said: “Some of them went to prison, some of them lost their minds and some of them committed suicide and this huge tragedy still goes on because they haven’t been paid compensation or anything.”
He went on: “The really cynical thing was that people were told they were on their own and no one else was experiencing problems with the IT system.
“The person who has written this show has found a way to condense all of that history into four hours of drama, which will be immediately explicable to everyone.”
Alan was directly involved in the new series and Toby said he spoke to him a lot when making the show.
He told Graham: “It’s hugely positive and uplifting in the sense that Alan Bates is a very discreet and private man who didn’t want this to happen, but achieved this extraordinary thing of mobilising all of these very isolated postmasters in creating a movement.”
Toby added: “Alan is a force for good in the world.”
As Toby said in his interview, he wasn’t as aware of the Post Office scandal until he started making this new series and hopes it will bring it the attention of others so that Alan can finally get justice.
He concluded: “I hope that this drama and the documentary that goes with it will also mobilise the general population again and make people feel like this has got to be sorted. Maybe even turning into an election issue.”
Mr Bates vs The Post Office premieres on 1st January at 9pm on ITV and ITVX.