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This week’s Radio Times cover says: 65 shows you must not miss in 2024! The vast majority of them are dramas. People have a huge appetite for them and performers and producers know the impact drama can have. Just what an extraordinary influence it can wield was brought home by the public reaction to ITV’s dramatised account of the Post Office IT scandal, Mr Bates vs The Post Office. So strong was the response that the Government has now intervened. Some have asked why did it take a TV drama to galvanise the public and politicians? But as Gwynneth Hughes, who wrote it said, that is what drama is supposed to do. It has happened before. Cathy Come Home in the 1960s led people to realise how terrible homelessness is especially affecting children. Boys From the Blackstuff, broadcast in the 1980s, highlighted the plight of the unemployed in a way that bald statistics in a news report never could. Spotlight, the Oscar-winning movie about child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, brought home what abuse does to victims and the way in which an institution protects its back. Ever since human beings lived in caves and sat around warming fires, they’ve responded to story-telling. People make sense of the world through narrative. The Gospel writers understood that, with their accounts of the life of Jesus. Jesus himself understood it too, explaining his teaching through the use of parables. Some of them are so powerful that plenty beyond the Christian churches know what it means to be a Good Samaritan – to be prepared to help people who are strangers, even those who are apparently enemies of your own people. They realise what the Prodigal Son signifies – not so much that he’s profligate, but because of Jesus’ parable, he’s recognised as someone who’s truly repentant, and his story shows how the forgiveness of someone badly wronged, can change lives. These may be stories, but the narratives help highlight essential truths. They give insights into choices people make, and the consequences, whether good or bad, of their decisions. In that sense stories – from Jesus’ parables and the narratives of his own life, to Shakespeare and even television soap operas, are morality tales. They provide us with truths about humanity. And while some of those truths – as happened with the drama about the Post Office scandal – can be sobering about the worst of human nature, they also reveal in people’s reactions to these stories, a deep desire for not only truth, but for justice too.