Mr Bates v the Post Office is a wonderful piece of political drama, exquisitely acted and directed. More than anything, it is superbly written by Gwyneth Hughes. As for its remarkable impact, there’s always a question about why and how a scandal makes the transition from “news story of moderate interest” to “massive political priority”. Take the phone-hacking scandal. After months of reporting, it exploded beyond the pages of the Guardian and into the media at large only after one particular revelation: that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked by the News of the World while she was missing. The turning point was the recognition that phone hacking could affect ordinary people, not only celebrities.
Or consider the Windrush scandal: though Amelia Gentleman had reported for six months on those affected by the Home Office’s injustices, it became a cause celebre pursued by the wider media only after she published one specific story on the refusal of the then prime minister, Theresa May, to meet Caribbean heads of state to discuss the affair. Such moments in the life of a story are essentially unpredictable. May’s snub, at such a high political level, dramatically reinforced her reputation for being robotic and unempathetic, like the very Home Office over which she had presided.
