Dramatic Action

I have been following the Post Office scandal ever since Nick Wallis began to report on it in 2011. Not only could I not believe what I was reading and hearing, but I couldn’t believe it was attracting so little attention: this is the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history. When Nick later produced a series for Radio 4, I often found it too debilitating and infuriating to listen to the stories about nine hundred people whose lives who had been totally destroyed – with many sent to prison and four committing suicide. It was astonishing that nobody with the power to do something about it seemed to care. So it is remarkable and wonderful that a television drama written by Gwyneth Hughes has finally stirred the country into action. We don’t often think of drama being able to change the world these days, so this should give us all hope that what we do in the arts can sometimes make a profound and astonishing difference.