BBC Radio 4
21 episodes listed below
Evidence, testimony, and a national reckoning.
A measured BBC investigation follows the Post Office Horizon scandal through testimony, documents, quashed convictions, and inquiry evidence. It keeps the focus on wrongly convicted sub-postmasters while testing the explanations offered by senior figures.
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The Great Post Office Trial is a sober BBC investigation of the Horizon scandal, told through people, documents, and the slow exposure of institutional conduct. It begins with sub-postmasters whose lives were damaged by prosecutions and accusations based on computer data the Post Office said could not be wrong. The stories are often devastating. Wendy Buffery describes conviction, isolation, and suicidal despair before contact from Jo Hamilton interrupts that loneliness. Seema Misra’s case sits near the beginning of the reporting history, recalled through Devinder Misra’s effort to get someone to pay attention. Parmod Kalia appears as someone still waiting for justice while facing serious ill health. The programme gives victims room to speak, but it does not leave their testimony floating without context. Nick Wallace repeatedly turns from personal damage to memos, legal advice, inquiry evidence, and institutional decisions. That structure gives the show its force. It is not content to say the Post Office failed; it asks who knew what, what they were shown, what they disclosed, and what they chose to prioritise. Recent episodes examine unsafe convictions, compensation schemes, the Clarke advice, Second Sight, and the role of senior leadership. They also address a Post Office security compliance document that used racist classification language and raise the question of whether racism influenced prosecution decisions. Paula Vennells’ inquiry evidence is tested against emails and warnings about Horizon, past prosecutions, and media management. Nick Reid’s interview is used to press the Post Office on disclosure, culture, and accountability. The show’s pacing is deliberate. It trusts listeners to sit with legal language, procedural failures, and uncomfortable silences. Its most memorable moments often come when a calm question meets an evasive or damning answer. The wider arc is a reckoning for the Post Office, the legal system, government oversight, and a society that took too long to listen. For all its gravity, the series also records persistence: campaigners, lawyers, investigators, and former sub-postmasters forcing names into the record and evidence into public view.
Made for: For listeners who want rigorous investigative journalism about institutional failure, legal accountability, and the human cost of the Horizon scandal. It suits those comfortable with serious testimony, procedural detail, and slow-building evidence.
What sets it apart: The show’s power comes from its discipline: first-person accounts are paired with documents, inquiry exchanges, and decisions rather than broad outrage. It follows the scandal beyond exposure into disclosure, compensation, leadership scrutiny, and unfinished justice.
An investigation of the largest miscarriage of justice in UK legal history. It's the story of how the Post Office systematically persecuted honest people, and how a small band of victims fought back in the face of impossible odds.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Nick Wallace connects victims' testimony, institutional records and sustained questioning to show how the Horizon scandal survived repeated warnings.
The Great Post Office Trial follows Nick Wallace through the human, legal and institutional consequences of the Horizon scandal. His narration connects wrongful prosecutions and quashed convictions to a larger question: how the Post Office handled warnings, evidence and…
A PR email becomes evidence before you have time to mistake media management for accountability.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A careful hour on how the Post Office scandal moved from warning signs to public reckoning.
Nick Wallace tracks the Post Office scandal from the first warnings through to the evidence that made the reckoning hard to ignore. He moves from the BBC investigation and later scrutiny to the 2024 moment when an ITV drama brought the case to a wider audience, public anger…
A rare Post Office interview that keeps the focus on racial classification codes and accountability.
This bonus edition offers a rare interview with Post Office chief executive Nick Reid, recorded by chance outside a parliamentary hearing at the Palace of Westminster in London and presented in lightly edited form.
A careful, damning account of how one wrongful conviction opened onto a much wider institutional scandal.
This chapter of The Great Post Office Trial tracks how one wrongful conviction sat inside a wider scandal, and how the damage spread into families, jobs, and private grief.
A serious chapter that turns legal detail and testimony into a public reckoning.
Episode 11 treats the Post Office Horizon scandal as a reckoning, returning to Seema Misra and Jo Hamilton before widening out to the quashed convictions and the damage that followed.
Episode 18 of The Great Post Office Trial examines the aftermath of the 2024 ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which generated enough public pressure to push the UK government into legislating to quash hundreds of sub-postmaster convictions.
Nick Reid finally says yes.
Late October 2010 finds Wendy Buffery alone.
Ten years after the host's first BBC report, the case finally reaches its reckoning.
The Great Post Office Trial examines how more than 500 sub-postmasters challenged the Post Office over Horizon computer-account shortfalls.