Mr Bates vs the Post Office, a story of online bookkeeping systems, has become one of the most popular television series ever screened in Britain and without doubt the most impactful. It tells the story of a postal worker, Alan Bates, who led a campaign to clear his and his colleagues’ names. Played by Toby Jones, Bates was accused in 2003 of stealing £1,200 ($1,600) from the small Post Office branch he ran in Wales. Bates knew he had not stolen anything and that the accounts that showed the money was missing were wrong. He suspected the Post Office’s new computer system, Horizon, was to blame. But how to prove it? Thanks to Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which draws on thousands of newspaper reports, TV documentaries, and evidence presented to public inquiries, Britons now know that, far from being the happy home of red post boxes, the Post Office has been incompetent, corrupt, and morally bankrupt. Everyone loves a David versus Goliath story. But this one is uniquely appealing in a country that still considers itself a bastion of “fair play,” especially when David is a working-class hero whose idea of a good time is a soggy walk in the Welsh hills followed by a pint of warm bitter. —John Arlidge