Foxtel (BBC First) and Binge
★★★★
Steve Coogan has never been afraid to be unlikeable. His greatest comic creation,the radio and sometime-TV presenter Alan Partridge,is a classic study in pomposity and self-delusion,while his self-parody inThe Trip films and TV series,in which he stars and spars with Rob Brydon,is unsparing in its dissection of the inflated yet fragile male ego.
Steve Coogan plays Jimmy Savile in The Reckoning.BBC First
But nothing he has done before comes close to the role of Jimmy Savile in terms of loathsomeness,even as there are echoes in it of those two other turns. Savile was a DJ before becoming a household name as one of the BBC’s biggest TV presenters. He was a man of enormous ego. And he was practised in the art of deception.
The real Jimmy Savile.Supplied
If you saw the two-part Netflix documentary from a couple of years ago you will know what to expect:a portrait of a sexual predator and paedophile who used charitable works and his connections with the powerful to mask his crimes. You will know that he regularly dropped hints in public of his true nature. And you will know that the BBC either failed or chose not to notice what was going on right under its institutional nose,even to the point of spiking its own investigation into his alleged crimes just a month after his death in 2011.
This four-part drama is from the BBC,and stands as a belated act of contrition and self-flagellation. It includes testimony from four of Savile’s real-life victims,and extensive clips from the archive of the real Savile onTop of the Pops,Savile’s Travels andJim’ll Fix It – a show on which for 19 years he used the promise of making kids’ dreams come true as cover for inflicting nightmares that will never end – alongside Coogan’s through-the-decades portrayal. It’s as fascinating to watch as it is horrific.
At 58,Coogan is obviously too old to play the Savile we first meet as a 20-something DJ and nightclub promoter whose pattern of criminal sexual behaviour is already set. A series of wigs – you’d describe them as bad had Savile’s own thatch not been so ridiculous – and make-up more or less gets Coogan over the hump as the decades progress. But really,it’s Coogan’s performance that carries it,and props to him,as few actors would even consider a role like this,let alone see it through with such a relentless lack of redeeming qualities.
His Savile is wracked not so much by guilt over his actions as curiosity and,in the end,fear:will anyone notice his behaviour,or call it out if they do? Will his Roman Catholic god cast him into eternal damnation or fulfil the promise of forgiveness and salvation? Will his reputation as a benign uncle to the poor and needy survive,and be enough to shield him from innuendo and investigation,to the end?
It’s as if Savile’s life was one long act of brinkmanship,with a mounting pile of victims providing the ever-taller precipice on which he dared himself to balance. There’s no plea for sympathy here,at least not for the devil. Savile is beyond the pale,beyond forgiveness,ultimately beyond any sort of humanity with which we might wish to identify. He is a creep,an abuser,a heartless hustler for whom good works were merely a passage to bad deeds.
As the title of the book on which the series is based makes clear,Savile flourishedIn Plain Sight. We can only hope that changing times,a growing willingness to give an ear to the words of victims,and exposés like this (admittedly belated) drama mean his like might never do so again.
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