Mr Bates vs. the Post Office is ITV’s biggest new drama in over a decade

Mr Bates vs. the Post Office is ITV’s biggest new drama in over a decade beating Downton Abbey launch. Besides being a ratings hit, dramatising the story with such a high calibre of British actors has reignited the campaign for justice nearly 25 years on, for a group of ordinary people - and the entire nation is behind them.

WATCH THE TRAILER BELOW

Inspired by real-life worker Alan Bates, the drama series tells the extraordinary story of the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, where hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to a defective IT system. International air dates are still to be confirmed.

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

NEWS PROVIDED BY
ITV Press Centre

Mr Bates vs. the Post Office is ITV’s biggest new drama in over a decade, even beating the launch of Downton Abbey in 2010. The ITV Studios and Little Gem series has now averaged 9.8m viewers across its four episodes, including 7 day viewing across all devices plus pre-TX viewing.

Including post-7 day viewing, the first three episodes have now all been watched by over 10.6m viewers, with the launch currently averaging 10.9m after ten days of catch up.

The series, including the documentary, has had 16.6m streams so far on ITVX.

It is the biggest drama across all channels since Line of Duty series 6 on BBC One in 2021. It is the biggest new drama across all channels since Bodyguard on BBC One in 2018. And it is ITV's biggest drama since Broadchurch in 2017.

The four episodes are the most watched programmes on any channel so far this year. Mr Bates vs. the Post Office is distributed internationally by ITV Studios.

*Viewing from 2019 - to date is based on C7 viewing including pre-broadcast and non-TV viewing, first runs only. Please note that pre-2019, C7 viewing did not include non-TV data.

Source ITV Press Centre