ITV has rightly been taking a victory lap over the success of Mr Bates and The Post Office, the miniseries depicting the Horizon scandal and the Javert-like persecution of subpostmasters.

Reportedly, ITV wasn’t sure the show would find an audience, although it is now claiming to possess super-strategic scheduling skills… in retrospect.

Mr Bates and The Post Office has gone some way to whitewash its pre-Christmas £1.5 million hiring of Nigel Farage for I’m a Celebrity, but its boasting about the drama’s effect should be balanced with knowledge of the network’s own relatively recent troubles (within the time frame of the Post Office affair) regarding the TV phone-in scams that fleeced the public.

In 2007, watchdog Ofcom condemned the broadcaster in words that foreshadowed the Post Office fiasco, questioning “why GMTV had relied so heavily on a telecoms company which had more than 20 breaches recorded against it by [regulator] ICSTIS but provided a substantial portion of its annual profits.”

“GMTV responded that it was hard to explain why it had not taken more notice of Opera’s compliance record, but that it was not alone in the industry in not having done so.

“GMTV’s disregard for the need to operate any reasonable compliance procedure, verification, oversight or management of the arrangements for the conduct of these competitions over such a long period of time could not, in [Ofcom’s] view, be described as anything other than gross negligence.
 
“This resulted in the widespread and systematic deception of millions of viewers who paid to enter the competitions in the belief that they had a fair chance of winning when in fact their chances were diminished or non-existent.”

 
Auntie’s dirty bloomers?

 
ITV’s competitors at the BBC shouldn’t be too smug either; Richard Sharp’s loan advice to Boris Johnson before his appointment as BBC chairman and the infiltration of the corporation by “active agents” (according to Emily Maitlis) of the Tory Party would also make an interesting docu-drama.

As would the events of November 2011, when a special Christmas edition of the late necrophile/rapist/paedophile’s Jim’ll Fix It was commissioned by then BBC1 controller Danny Cohen (“I think it will be a great tribute to Jimmy to recreate his famous show as a Christmas treat for audiences”), something inexplicably missing from last year’s The Reckoning — likewise, the absence of former Post Office CEO and later ITV boss Adam Crozier in ITV’s show.

Back in 2012, Auntie also faced a phone-in probe, when £100,000 of Children In Need donations were discovered “resting” (to quote Father Ted) in an internal BBC account.

The Institute of Fundraising’s Megan Pacey commented at the time: “The BBC has risked damaging the trust and confidence that the public has in charitable appeals. Sadly, it is the beneficiaries of these BBC appeals that are likely to suffer in the event that donations decrease.”

Adam Rothwell of Intelligent Giving also stated what could be termed the bleeding obvious: “It is immoral to behave in that way, to consciously say we could have given this money to charity, but we are going to keep it.” Comic Relief, Sport Relief, and even Blue Peter have also all had form with various shades of competition skulduggery at the expense of trusting viewers.
 
 

Things to come
 

The Grenfell inquiry has already been dramatised by Channel 4, while the BBC has a three-part series about the fire and its aftermath in the works. The decades-long NHS contaminated blood saga also looks set to be the subject of a TV drama.
 
Turning to uniquely Tory scandals of the last decade, there are plenty to choose from for TV adaptations, including the following (with casting suggestions):
 
Baroness Mone and the PPE Scandal
 
Sheridan Smith stars as the (alleged) dodgy PPE grifter/life peer, with Alan Cumming playing shifty enabler Michael Gove. John Heffernan (Jonathan Harker in 2020’s Dracula miniseries) appears as Matt Hancock.
 
Boris Johnson, Brexit and Russia
 
1970s Confessions star Robin Asquith is Johnson; exquisitely bearded entertainment host Rylan Clark is Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia. Mark Strong cameos as Dominic Cummings.
 
Toxic Waste: Corby, Silverdale and the Sunderland Triathlon
 
In a career swerve, James Corden takes on the role of loafing former environment secretary Therese Coffey, with comedian Rosie Jones as her bumbling best mate Liz Truss.
 
The Police: Toxic WhatsApp Messages
 
A look at those who took pictures of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, and the killing of Sarah Everard (plus the events at her vigil). Dame Cressida Dick, a profile in career arse-covering; Catherine Tate plays the hapless former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
 
The Beach Was Closed: The Botched Afghan Withdrawal
 
Rise of the Footsoldier’s Craig Fairbrass plays semi-psychotic ex-deputy PM Dominic Raab, enraged at having to cut short his well-earned luxury holiday in Cyprus.
 
The Tory Ministers and Party Officials Who Dodged Tax
 
A cast of (literally) hundreds, headed by Omid Djalili as Nadhim Zahawi.
 
Peerages For Kids
 
Twenty-year-old Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones, The Last of Us) is Charlotte Owen, at just 30, the youngest life peer, naturally enough appointed by Johnson.
 
The Sex Pest Tory MPs
 
Tom Hollander essays leering ex-deputy chief whip Chris Pincher “by name” (according to his then patron Johnson). Hugh Laurie is Peter Bone. And so on…