BBC defends decision to turn Jimmy Savile’s life into show starring Steve Coogan
The BBC has defended its decision to turn Jimmy Savile’s life into a four-part drama, in order for lessons to be learned about sex offenders operating in plain sight. Actor Steve Coogan, who plays the disgraced star - exposed as a paedophile, rapist and serial abuser only after his death - admitted he had to put his “overwhelming sense of revulsion” to one side to play him convincingly.
And writer Neil McKay said he hoped it would serve as some sort of justice for Savile’s hundreds of victims, including four who speak out during the drama. “What the survivors have said to us is that he just got to the grave before they had any justice," he explained. "But what they've said is they feel it is a posthumous trial - the trial of Jimmy Savile when he's gone. Some people might feel like it's useless, but to them it isn't. To them, it mattered that we have told the story through to that last moment.
“There's no greater story which serves as a warning to people about sexual offending and groomers. Savile conned his way through our society to the very top. To me Savile is the ultimate warning from history. This series is a cautionary tale.”
The drama pulls no punches when it comes to showing Savile, who died in 2011 aged 84, as a prolific abuser who preyed primarily on teenage girls and young women but also on younger girls, boys, those who were ill and disabled and even the dead.
Actor Steve Coogan plays the disgraced star (BBC/TNI PRESS LTD.)
The BBC has defended its decision to turn Jimmy Savile’s life into a four-part drama (BBC)In one disturbing scene he is shown molesting a body in the hospital morgue at Stoke Mandeville. Coogan admitted he had to veto one aspect of the scene. "It was just a detail that I wasn't comfortable with. So I had a conversation with the director and we came to an agreement on what was the most appropriate way to depict it.” He still found the scene difficult, with his character putting his hand under the sheet covering the body. “It was really disturbing. What can you say? It's as disturbing as it looks.”
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McKay, who has worked on many factual dramas before including Four Lives and The Moorside, said it was important to include the scene because there was ample evidence it had happened - not least in Savile’s own autobiographies.
“You don't want to cause distress or show something that's grim, but in the end, if you think about Savile, it's about power,” he explained. “It’s the ultimate violation I think, to do something like that. I think it would've been wrong and untrue not to show it, not least because it's all there in Savile's own writing.”
Coogan agreed it had been hard to get the balance right, which is why the editing of the series had taken two years. “There's a tension between sharing too much of Savile's offences, and it being grotesque, or sugar-coating them, which is also wrong so that we don't see the horror of what he did.”
The actor also feels that it’s important the drama serves as a warning for the future. “Human nature doesn't change and Savile-like creatures can and will come along again,” he said. “It's important that we do everything we can to spot it as soon as we can, that people feel they can come forward safely and speak about it.”
The Alan Partridge star, 57, needed six “looks” to take him from playing Savile in his forties, as a club DJ during the 1960s to his death aged 84. “I felt like there's probably a handful of people in the country who could play the part, and I did consider myself one of them. But I had great trepidation about it, obviously.
“I knew it's the potential for catastrophic failure if you get it wrong, but that's not a reason not to do it. It wasn't enjoyable, it was a professional challenge that I wanted to take on.”
The drama sees Savile remembering his early life by speaking to biographer Dan Davie (Getty Images)The drama sees Savile remembering his early life by speaking to biographer Dan Davie and also includes the harrowing experiences of Sam, Susan, Kevin and Darien who were all youngsters when they fell prey to Savile. For the story they are played by actors, and they also give present day testimonies on what they endured. Coogan said that meeting the survivors on set “made me realise the huge responsibility we had.”
Despite having to get inside the mind of the monster to play him, Coogan doesn’t understand what drove Savile to behave in the way that he did. “People say, ‘Did he create this veneer, this charade to facilitate his abuse? Or was it to mitigate his abuse when the final reckoning came?’ I think probably it was a perfect storm of both.”
The film stops when Savile dies, with a message on the screen saying that the BBC went on to broadcast two glowing tributes - while a planned Newsnight programme, in which his crimes might first have been revealed, was pulled.
BBC content boss Charlotte Moore defended the dark series, saying it was important to learn lessons for the future. “I don't think we shy away from the BBC's part in this. I think it's very clear that the people who worked closely with him, who supported his promotion from one show to another, had warnings of rumours and people saying, ‘I don't think this is the right thing to do.’
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“I think all four episodes trace the moments where the BBC could have done something to stop this man and didn’t - the failings of the institution.”
The series is made by ITV Studios and executive produced by Jeff Pope, who has previously made docudramas on the Moors Murderers plus serial killers Fred and Rose West. “It was one of the most difficult pieces I've ever been involved in. Every part of the process was incredibly challenging. We had to get it right,” he said.
“We were very aware, very quickly, that our reputations were on the line. Because this couldn't be seen to be the BBC marking its own homework. Honestly, there wasn't any part of the process where we felt censored or put under pressure to go light on the BBC. We made exactly the story that we wanted to make.”
Despite the endless swirling rumours about his sexual conduct, Savile is shown being promoted at the BBC, befriending Margaret Thatcher and receiving an OBE and later a knighthood.
Pope said the aim was to try and shed light on how Savile had repeatedly got away with his crimes. “This man was abusing and assaulting hundreds of people, essentially in front of our eyes. That leads to some very simple questions which we wanted to explore in this series: why and how did he get away with it? And how can we make sure it doesn’t happen again?
“The whole point of the story is he dies without what he'd done being brought to light. That was the story we wanted to tell.”
Some of Savile’s victims who were contacted by the programme-makers said they felt it was unnecessary to rake up the past again. “We wrote back and answered honestly,” Pope said. “That a proper, intelligent and sensible examination of what has happened was in the public interest.”
The Reckoning, BBC1 and iPlayer, 9pm, Monday 9 October.
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