With the death of Pope Francis, the world loses not only a church leader but also a moral compass

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.
![CS Lewis in 1947 [Pic: Scan of photograph by Arthur Strong]]( https://dev.morningstaronline.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/low_resolution/public/2025-04/Untitled-1.jpg.webp?itok=RsbHM2ER)
After a ruinous run at Tolkien, the streaming platforms are moving on to Narnia — a naff mix of religious allegory, colonial attitudes, and thinly veiled prejudices that is beyond rescuing, writes STEPHEN ARNELL


