In comparison, the phone-hacking scandal is one that many people will have some awareness of, having been the subject of a large volume of mainstream media reports as well as the Leveson Inquiry.
Yet even The Hack screenwriter Jack Thorne confessed to not understanding the true meaning of the story until setting out to write this dramatisation, which stars David Tennant, Robert Carlyle and Mr Bates himself, Toby Jones.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com at The Hack’s launch event, producer Spence candidly said: “You can’t hope for another event like Mr Bates.
“Mr Bates was a coming together of many different factors, and also it was about ordinary working people being treated abhorrently,” he continued.
He added: “I think that’s an easier thing for people to tap into emotionally than what this is, which is a story of corporate and personal abuse of power and the courage it takes to investigate and stand up against that.”
Spence conceded that while he doesn’t expect The Hack “to make the entire country angry” as Mr Bates vs The Post Office did, he and his team can’t deny that they “still dream a little of it”.
Still, he reflected: “You can’t ask for the performance of Mr Bates to be repeated.”
At a Q&A following a screening of the first two episodes, The Hack writer Thorne shared that his perception of the phone-hacking scandal – and its importance – changed fundamentally after researching the details for his scripts.
“My assumption was that the drama was in the journalists behaving badly, whereas actually, it’s in the response of the world to this story being broken by these brave people,” he explained.
“I don’t think it was a complicity – I don’t think there’s anything as structured as complicity involved in this – but there was a complacency [from journalists and politicians].”
He added: “There was a complacency in how people were prepared to look at themselves and look at their relationships. And trying to understand that felt like a very urgent task, and one that I was very, very keen to be involved in.”
The Hack premieres on ITV1 and ITVX on Wednesday 24th September 2025.
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