Post Office scandal, the musical? In the UK, news and entertainment blur.
| Marsden, England
“Make Good: The Post Office Scandal,” a musical performance of one of the United Kingdom’s most devastating miscarriages of justice, just wrapped up its tour of the English countryside.
It told the story of 983 British Post Office managers falsely accused of theft, ruining their reputations and, for some, landing them in jail. Later, it was revealed that accounting discrepancies due to computer error were to blame.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onIs entertainment a better way to inform about news events than actual reported stories? Sometimes it seems that way, as suggested by public response to recent dramatizations about the British Post Office scandal.
“Make Good” highlights how news stories can sometimes be told – and better told – in an entertainment format.
When “Mr Bates vs The Post Office,” a TV dramatization of the scandal, aired a year ago, many viewers were outraged that they had not previously heard of the case and blamed the U.K.’s mainstream media for failing in their work. Journalists responded that they had indeed followed the case, some for more than a decade. Audiences, they said, had simply not been listening.
“A complete story taken in one sitting has an impact on you in the way that 3,000 snippets of news through your social media or radio or television just can’t,” says Jeanie O’Hare, writer of “Make Good.” “I think that’s the way our imaginations work.”
It was a stage show that defied the norm, re-creating one of the United Kingdom’s most devastating miscarriages of justice.
And “Make Good: The Post Office Scandal” did it as a musical. There were choreographed dance numbers, power ballads, and pounding rock riffs.
But as this show toured sleepy village halls across England, it also told the story of 983 British Post Office managers falsely accused of theft: allegations that destroyed their reputations, livelihoods, and, for some, landed them in jail. Later, it was revealed that accounting discrepancies due to errors in the Post Office’s Horizon computer system were to blame – a fact that the 364-year-old institution repeatedly tried to cover up.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onIs entertainment a better way to inform about news events than actual reported stories? Sometimes it seems that way, as suggested by public response to recent dramatizations about the British Post Office scandal.
“Make Good,” which wrapped up in early December after six weeks on the road, highlights how news stories can sometimes be told – and better told – in an entertainment format. Like the drama series about the Post Office scandal aired a year ago, “Mr Bates vs The Post Office,” dramatizations of the news can often draw more attention to an event. They can also build public pressure for injustices to be addressed. And that can happen even when the media did due diligence in covering the news when it happened. Entertainment just seems to hit differently.
“Theater is the best empathy machine we’ve ever built. You start to think about someone else’s worldview, start to stand in their shoes,” says Jeanie O’Hare, writer of “Make Good.” “I do think it makes stories cut through.”
Seeing the drama, missing the news
Watching the musical on a winter’s night in Marsden, a village tucked among the hills of northern England, many in the audience are visibly moved. There are four actors on stage, but also live musicians and a community choir; the room is crowded. As the show builds to a finale, the sound pushes in from all sides.
For Ms. O’Hare, a former chair of playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University, it was the scandal’s emotional punch that spurred her imagination. She created the show alongside composer Jim Fortune and theater companies New Perspectives and Pentabus, troupes that specialize in reaching the kinds of rural locations where local Post Offices act as cornerstones of the community.
She was not alone in seeing the scandal’s storytelling potential. In December 2023, ITV, one of the U.K.’s major TV channels, released “Mr Bates vs The Post Office.” It received widespread acclaim from audiences and critics alike.
But the series also revealed an uneasy disconnect between the British public and the media. Many viewers were outraged that they had not previously heard of the scandal and blamed the U.K.’s mainstream media for failing in their work. Journalists in turn protested that they had indeed followed the case; specialist publications such as Computer Weekly and the political magazine Private Eye had reported doggedly for more than a decade. Audiences, they said, had simply not been listening.
The spat mirrors a deepening social mistrust: According to the Reuters Institute’s “Digital News Report 2024,” just 36% of Britons say they trust the news “most of the time.”
That trend pushes productions such as “Make Good” and “Mr Bates vs The Post Office” into the spotlight. And that encourages traditional media – searching for ways to survive in a digital landscape dominated by social media – to seek ways of delivering the same emotional punch as their dramatized counterparts. In the Reuters Institute’s “Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2024” report, 43% of news publishers said they hoped to offer “more inspirational human stories” to re-engage increasingly news-avoiding audiences.
But pitting journalism against an artistic medium such as theater or television does not necessarily make for a fair fight. Even painstakingly researched shows such as “Make Good” can combine characters’ stories to create greater poignancy. They also have the advantage of looking at a story as a whole. The musical spans more than two decades and compresses them into a show that lasts little more than two hours.
“A complete story taken in one sitting has an impact on you in the way that 3,000 snippets of news through your social media or radio or television just can’t,” says Ms. O’Hare. “You have to exist in the world of complete narratives. I think that’s the way our imaginations work.”
Setting an example for the future
More hope lies in the idea that journalism and more modern, story-driven projects can complement, rather than contend with, each other.
While “Make Good” tells the story of the Post Office scandal, it also acts as a starting point for the audience to explore larger, more far-reaching issues, deliberately pushing people to reflect on the growing role of technology in their lives.
Former Post Office employee Chris Trousdale was wrongly prosecuted for false accounting, and shared his experiences with both the producers of “Make Good” and “Mr Bates vs The Post Office.”
He hopes that the scandal will leave a lasting legacy by prompting businesses and people to be more critical of technology. “It’s not, ‘Oh look, the little British Post Office had a problem.’ This is a warning shot across the bow,” Mr. Trousdale says.
“The risk is that something like AI will cause this to happen again,” he says. “And I want everybody in the world to think of the U.K. Post Office. I want them to think, ‘Let’s not prosecute that person. Let’s not fire them. Let’s just investigate a bit further before we act.’”
In the meantime, news coverage of the Post Office scandal continues. A yearslong official inquiry into the affair is still ongoing, while those wrongly accused are still waiting for authorities to return the assets of which they were stripped during court proceedings. The battle for compensation is set to be an even longer fight.
But for those who felt its devastating effects firsthand, continued public engagement is key. The form it takes is secondary.
“The best thing about the musical is you can feel that voice hitting you; it hits a raw nerve,” says Mr. Trousdale. “All of this is about making sure it doesn’t happen again. And if the best way for someone to digest this story and that information is by watching a musical – so be it.”
