Barnsley powerhouse Katherine Kelly returns to screens as she takes on a new role in this week’s TV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office.
The series, which is airing this week on ITV, tells the real-life story of the Post Office scandal, where a number of sub post masters were prosecuted over missing money, which was the result of a fault in its Horizon system.
Katherine plays Post Office employee Angela van den Bogerd, who was its head of partnerships before taking on a role as business improvement director. She had reportedly been handling complaints about the system since 2010 and had sat on a working group to deal with the scandal since 2014.
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It’s not the first role for ITV mirroring a real-life event that Katherine has taken on – late last year she played the part of Emily Jackson, who was killed by Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, in The Long Shadow.
(Image: ITV)
She has previously opened up about what is was like living in Yorkshire at the time Sutcliffe was active. Speaking to The Sun’s TV Mag, she said: “I grew up in Yorkshire in full knowledge of those five years of terror. It still lives within those people. It changed everything – it was indeed a long shadow. And it wasn’t in an abstract way, it was day to day – you went and met women from bus stops, and if a woman was 10 minutes late for work, it was panic.”
She continued: “It left a scar on the landscape. The drama has been made with nuance and authenticity. I trust the team, I believe in the four years of research, and I do not take the responsibility of playing someone who existed lightly.”
These hard-hitting roles are a far cry away from her breakout stint as Coronation Street’s Becky McDonald. The star made her debut in 2006, before leaving in 2012.
Katherine has Yorkshire roots, having been born in Barnsley and growing up in South Yorkshire. Katherine is known to still have strong links with the Lamproom Theatre which was run by her dad.
She went on to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made her screen debut in Last of the Summer Wine in 2003.
Since then, she has gone from strength to strength, starring in Happy Valley and Liar.
Katherine has previously said she enjoyed playing a character in her Yorkshire accent and prepared for the role in Happy Valley by shadowing police detectives in Halifax.
Katherine married her then-partner Ryan Clark in 2013 in Las Vegas and they share two daughters together but have since separated. She is now in a relationship with Line Of Duty actor Tony Pitts.
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