User Reviews

British Post Offices have been regarded as the envy of the world. Not after this drama was shown.

The fate of the wrongly accused sub-postmasters has been described as one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice ever. Some of the affected people took their own lives. Others had their lives ruined, left financially destitute as the Post Office aided by their lawyers pursued private prosecutions and civil claims knowing their computer system was faulty.

In 1996 the Post Office hired Fujitsu to develop an IT system regarding the collection of pensions and benefits at post offices. Beset with problems it was scrapped at a cost of £700 million.

Hoping that the money spent was not a total loss. The Post Office repurposed the IT system as an accounting software in Post Office branches. Even though doubts were raised regarding its reliability. It was called the Horizon software.

The first episode concentrates on three people. Alan Bates (Toby Jones) Jo Hamilton (Monica Dolen) and Lee Castleton (Will Mellor.)

Three sub-postmasters caught up in the fallout. Jo pleads guilty and recieves a non custodial sentence. Lee tries to fight a civil case on his own and loses. Facing legal costs of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

It is Alan Bates who decides to fight back. Be obstructive against the Post Office bully boys. Eventually with the aid of an IT journalist the word spreads that there are others affected.

It is difficult not to be moved by this drama. What this people went through, some still going through. Also feel angry as to what the Post Office did to them.

The opener sets up a David v Goliath battle with a bent corporate entity out to callously ruin people in order to save face.

Although you can google what happened with this scandal it is so different when actual lives of people who were affected is before you (at least the actors portraying the victims).

I found the first episode very interesting, engaging and enraging!!!! The absolute gall of the representatives from the post office to assume everyone was wrong is so frustrating!!! Large corporations are such bullies and fail to recognize their own misgivings...but I digress.

I look forward to the upcoming episodes to see how it all played out. Unfortunately I believe their were some lives lost due to this huge scandal. I really hope they were all well compensated.

Having had The Post Office's new Horizon system installed, various sub postmasters find huge sums of money missing, money that they're called on to replace, the cases of Alan Bates, Jo Hamilton and Lee Castleton are explored.

Absolutely astonishing first part, no wonder this has got the whole country talking, this is just incredible. The acting was superb, Monica Dolan once again, she's just the best.

Good drama entertains, great drama moves you, only exceptional drama gets the nation talking, this is that.

The Horizon system was clearly an absolute shambles, I'm not sure those people on the end of the helpline had any clue as to the impact on those people they were speaking to.

The Post Office had and continues to have far too much power, shocking that things were allowed to get to this.

10/10.