In recent years there have been so many good drama series across an ever-increasing number of channels that gradually they meld into each other and at the start of a second week you have to think which plotline belongs to which series.
Was Detective Inspector Thorogood trying to outwit the murderous acrobat or was the acrobat actually a private detective working undercover in a circus seeking to outwit a completely different villain in another series.
It gets harder when bit part actors turn up in a rerun of an old series and also as the star of a completely new spy series.
My dear wife and I have found the best way round this.
We either wait for a complete series to finish taping and then watch it over a couple of days or, once the first episode has recorded we bookmark the rest of the series enabling us to watch that one over a short period.
The trouble with this is that you have to make sure you don’t get any spoilers from other tv shows, such as BBC Breakfast where the presenters even do stories on new programmes on rival channels.
This is why we came somewhat late to Mr Bates vs the Post Office, an extremely good four-part series about the Post Office scandal which is on nearly everyone’s lips at the moment.
Like most people I had only picked up bits and bobs of the original story as more and more sub-postmasters faced charges of theft or falsifying accounts or other strange charges involving computers and monetary transactions.
I had taken a rather closer interest in this ITV drama because my late mother lived in Craig-y-Don, Llandudno, and my sister still lives there, and Alan Bates, the pivotal character in this programme, ran their local Post Office. Both of them would have been in his Post Office regularly.
As I watched this programme I began to realise that this was far more than isolated sub-postmasters spread across the country fiddling the books or falling foul of a dodgy bit of computer software.
Yes, the computer company may have had dodgy software.
Yes, now and again a sub postmaster might have skimmed cash.
The numbers across the country being hit by a computer glitch is as unlikely as a vast number of people in the same job stealing money.
What really got to me, however, was the arrogance of the Post Office executives lying about the number of cases blamed on the software system, claiming they were isolated incidents and that nobody else had reported similar cases.
Since the programme the publicity around this case has sky-rocketed and a lot of that publicity is centred on the actions of the CEO with a million-signature demand for her to return her CBE.
I am not seeking to defend her in any way. If her actions are as bad as they appear to be then she should not be asked to return her CBE she should be instructed to return it and then there should be a thorough investigation into her possible culpability in the case.
The point is that this has been going on, apparently, for over 20 years and under more than one Post Office CEO. What is more it has been going on under not just one government but under three different ones: Labour, under Blair and Brown; Tory/Lib Dem, under Cameron with Clegg as deputy; then a Tory government under Cameron May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak.
It is time the government and the Post Office were removed from the current investigation and that the whole thing be handed over to an independent investigative body.
Robin's Nest 