Sort of a showdown, but is the Beeb going crazy for helping the monster? CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Steve Coogan’s Jimmy Savile drama

THE BILL (BBC1)

Rating:

What a flirt, that Maggie Thatcher, eh? Show her a bit of sassy northern charm, a flash of flattery, and she’ll be coy and giggling like a schoolgirl.

Steve Coogan’s turn as Top Of The Pops host and ruthless sex predator Jimmy Sale in The Reckoning (BBC1) describes his 15-year friendship with the Tory leader as incredibly playful, even risky.

Played by Fenella Vulgar, she responds to his flourish with feigned innocence and blushing. I kept expecting her to push him away with an exclamation of, ‘Oh, you’re awful… but I like you!’

It’s all part of a four-hour drama that blames every part of the establishment for Savile’s harrowing crimes: the BBC, which employed him, of course, but also the church, the health service, the government and newspapers.

The effect is to shift the blame from the aunt to the rest of society. If everyone is guilty, no one has to carry the can.

Steve Coogan’s turn as Top Of The Pops host and ruthless sex predator Jimmy Savile (pictured) in The Reckoning (BBC1) describes his 15-year friendship with the Tory leader as incredibly playful, even risky

All four episodes of the show, which airs from Monday, were screened for reviewers at BBC Broadcasting House this week, followed by a question and answer session.

That makes it doubly difficult to judge: ordinary viewers won’t be watching The Reckoning too much in the cinema, surrounded by professional colleagues, and won’t have to listen to the writer, producer, star and senior BBC executive defend their artistic decisions.

Charlotte Moore, the Beeb’s director of content, took issue with suggestions that The Reckoning downplayed their culpability for creating the monster. Executive producer Geoff Pope protested that, apart from devoting an entire episode to Saville at the BBC, little more could have been said about the predator’s relationship with the broadcaster.

Writer Neil McKay rightly pointed out that there was no evidence of a concerted cover-up within the corporation and that his script meticulously stuck to the known facts.

And Coogan gave me a wry smile and said: “If you’re saying this is some sort of face-saving exercise about the BBC, and we’re all in on it, I think you and I both know that’s not true.” ‘

But the fact is, The Reckoning lets the broadcaster off the hook. Savile was portrayed as a master manipulator, posing as an eccentric big-headed clown to distract from his blatant sexual assaults on young women and children. When senior staff raise vague concerns, they are dismissed. The head of light entertainment, Bill Cotton (Michael Gibson), who insists that Savile must be harmless because he’s so good for the audience, is portrayed as gullible and willfully short-sighted – but no worse.

The Reckoning fails to consider the impact that the BBC’s advocacy of Savile had on the whole country. It was not simple that people in all walks of life were blinded. His fame made him invincible, and television gave him that fame.

The drama is admittedly scrupulous in not glamorizing Savile. Coogan constantly emphasizes the darkness in man, the murkiness and the creepiness. We see little of the manic performer, much more of the bully.

The actor said he didn’t want to “turn him into some kind of pantomime villain.” He captures the voice perfectly, and with the help of makeup, he can play DJ at every stage of his adult life.

Gemma Jones plays Agnes, Savile’s deeply Catholic mother, who disapproved of her unmarried son’s racketeering life before he rose to fame. The account takes a Freudian turn, arguing that Savile’s narcissism was rooted in his need to impress his mother, whom he called “the duchess”.

She knew he was a liar and suspected much worse, but she felt it her duty to believe him. His cheeky charity antics won her over, and he won an OBE for it. He cheated on her and, in addition, it allowed him to cheat on everyone. In Agnes’s last years, she accepted the sleaze of his showbiz life. During the Q&A, McKay revealed that Savile boasted: “I turned the Duchess into a gangster” – a telling quote that somehow wasn’t included in the script.

The showdown airs on BBC1 on Monday at 9pm

The title Reckoning refers to the imputation of sins on Judgment Day. McKay said Seville used to joke that if St Peter didn’t let him through the Pearly Gates, “I might have to break his fingers” – another line that didn’t make the show.

The drama uses two devices to tell its story. Mark Stanley is journalist Dan Davies, who interviewed Savile for a biography over the years as his fame faded. All the textbook traits of a psychopath are on display here – presumption of superiority, bare-faced lying, sly hints and riddles, pride in horrible actions, rash revelations, complete lack of conscience.

Another narrative device, one that underlines the human cost of Savile’s crimes, uses interviews with four real-life victims. The youngest was Kevin, a cub scout who appeared on Jim’ll Fix It and was abused in the BBC dressing room. The eldest was Susan, in her 20s, who delivered a pair of glasses to Savile’s family home in Leeds. He sent her to the corner shop to buy him a pint of milk, took her in for a cup of tea and assaulted her – then handed her a microphone and interviewed her for a radio show.

Some of Savile’s dodgy friends appear, but there is no mention of other BBC predators such as Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall, or Savile’s Radio 1 colleague Chris Denning, who died in prison.

The most seemingly mentioned is John Peel, whose first wife was 15 years old.

It has never been investigated how Savile’s blatant sexual abuse over many years as an A-list BBC star allowed many other predators to hide in plain sight. “It just wasn’t the story we were telling,” Jeff Pope said.

And now that Reckoning has turned attention in so many other directions, it’s a story that may never be told.

The Showdown, BBC1 Monday, 9pm