VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 173 - TX JANUARY 28 2024

VISION ON SOUND

SANDY McGREGOR on MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 28th 2024

We don’t often deal with all that much outrage in the generally cosy world of VISION ON SOUND, where often the most controversial opinion I make is about whether a fifty year old television series is still acceptable for modern viewing, how certain shows came to be wiped, or disagreeing with my guests as to whether certain TV shows can be considered to be absolute rubbish or not, or whether we should, perhaps, only award that dubious accolade to anything produced in the last ten years or so.

Equally, we don’t often consider much in the way of modern or recent television to come under what we loosely call our watching brief.

And yet, because a certain recent ITV television drama has been causing a lot of discussion, and indeed outrage, I felt that we couldn’t really ignore it for twenty years in the hope that it might become worthy of our attention.

So, having already borrowed - and devoured - his copy of the book THE GREAT POST OFFICE SCANDAL by NICK WALLIS, I invited SANDY McGREGOR back onto the show to have a chat about the implications of the recently broadcast powerful four-part drama series MR BATES VERSUS THE POST OFFICE, the story of what has been called one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British History, written by GWYNETH HUGHES and directed by JAMES STRONG, which starred TOBY JONES alongside MONICA DOLAN and JULIE HESMONDHALGH as some of the “little people” doggedly and determinedly pursuing justice by taking on the POST OFFICE in a two decade battle to clear the names of over five hundred of his fellow sub-postmasters in a story which, finally, largely because of the broadcast of this production, has rightly been front and centre in the news agenda.

And whilst neither of us can claim any insights or personal involvement with the story, other than having taken a keen interest in it, and reading rather a lot about it, as well as discussing the series itself, our discussion does try to consider the power of television to occasionally make great positive changes happen, so we do briefly consider some of the – surprisingly few - other TV shows that can claim to have actually changed lives, and wonder just why it is that an important news story such as this somehow failed to make the same kind of impact in documentary form as it managed to as a drama series, and whether in future, that might be the only way any of us are likely to get the rest of the population to take much interest in some of the important things that are happening but which remain largely ignored.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.