T elevision got off to an extremely strong start in 2024. On New Year’s Day, an ITV drama featuring lots of people wearing cardigans and talking about IT problems landed on our screens – and who could have predicted it would go on to become one of the most influential shows of all time? Mr Bates vs The Post Office set the bar high. Then came a little something set in a Scottish castle to lighten the mood – The Traitors – which eight million of us watched 100 per cent faithfully, before the return of the criminally underseen Big Boys, the seen-by-almost-everyone One Day , new antics from Clarkson’s Farm , and much more.
.. Here is the best TV of the year so far.
.. The very first drama of 2024 (it arrived on 1 January), also turned out to be one of the most talked about of the year .
And its impact was colossal. This heartbreaking dramatisation of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history starred Toby Jones as Alan Bates, the former subpostmaster who took the Post Office to High Court after hundreds of staff were wrongly accused of theft and fraud – accusations that destroyed many lives. The four-part drama not only led to the UK Parliament passing a law overturning the convictions of subpostmasters, but also showed how drama – much more than news coverage or protests – has a unique power in capturing the public’s imagination and pushing issues to the front of the political agenda.
Four episodes, available on ITV No one was surprised .