The title doesn't sound all that engrossing: "Mr. Bates vs. Post Office." Who would want to see that? But in England, where it was made by ITV and first shown, it literally brought the British government to a standstill, recirculating a real life scandal that had long been almost forgotten. 

Now this epic four-part docudrama is on Masterpiece Theatre beginning Sunday night at 9 PM on WNED-TV Channel 17, and you'll be able to see why it caused such a ruckus. It's the story of hundreds of ordinary British citizens, called "sub-postmasters", caught up in a real life Kafkaesque nightmare, where they were accused of stealing and were told they owed the government thousands of dollars. (Shades of Toronto's home vacancy tax!)

They were vilified, harassed, convicted, faced jail time and condemned for decades, all the while unaware of why they were being accused of such thievery and crimes.

And then the real reason came out - a glitch in a U.K. post office payment computer had caused all of the problems, leaving these people as pariahs or dead by suicide. Turns out, some of those in charge knew it all along but refused to admit it. 

The show tells the story of the man who singlehandedly solved the mystery and defended the innocent, and while this normally isn't my cuppa British tea, all the reviews I've read about this show online have been outright raves. 

Here's one from TVInsider and another from Variety, which adds:

“There is absolutely no doubt that drama has changed lives,” says Nick Wallis, a journalist and author who has reported on the scandal for over a decade, and was a consultant on the show. “They have created something which so infuriated the public, it rose up their political priorities, and the government was forced to respond. Everything that you have seen has spun out since over the last three months, I would say 90% of that is due to the public anger generated by the drama.”

“The people who made that drama can go to their graves knowing that they have changed history,” continues Wallis. “The mass exoneration of more than 900 people in one act of legislation will be taught in history books in a hundred, two hundred years’ time. It’s that big a deal.”

Not bad for a dramatic TV show! To me, that makes it worth a watch. It starts Sunday at 9 PM, with a new episode every week after for the next three weeks.