Review — ‘The Reckoning’ (2023 miniseries)
The BBC have released a four part drama telling the real-life story of one of the most prolific sexual predators in British history. Let’s open up this four hour package and hold the contents up for a closer inspection: what this series is; what it tries to do; what it has gotten badly wrong and what it should have done instead.
If you do not know the name Jimmy Savile, then perhaps you’re on the younger end of your life, or perhaps you’re just not particularly familiar with UK pop culture. The story of Savile, or rather the infamy, is startlingly easy to summarise:
It’s the story of a man who worked as a DJ and found success through his wide-boy patter and eccentric appearance and behaviour. He parlayed this success into a career in television. He spearheaded multiple charitable campaigns and personally raised millions for worthy causes. He was given an OBE, then a Knighthood. When he died, his funeral pomp would not have displeased a prince or emperor. He was also a paedophile and a sexual abuser, targeting mostly (but not exclusively) young girls. He preyed on hospital patients, the mentally ill and even the dead. Sir James Savile OBE was one of the most prolific sex offenders in UK history, with hundreds (nigh thousands) of victims. And he got away with all of it, despite his behaviour being an open secret for decades.
The dramatisation, which aired in October 2023 and stars Steve Coogan as Savile, is the BBC’s attempt at telling this story whilst trying to focus the victims.
I will tell you, here, that Coogan gives an unmissable performance. Sincerely, I fear for the damage to his soul for the number of hours of footage of Savile he must have watched to so accurately capture the man’s spirit and image. Every expression, gesture, mannerism and intonation is exactly correct. His portrayal is what truly provides the engine to this miniseries.
Without Coogan, this series would struggle in finding both a focal point and an artistic justification for its almost voyeuristic staging of Savile’s crimes.
The four episodes drive us through Savile’s life, from being a younger man in Manchester to a strange octogenarian running marathons for charity, with the public image he carefully cultivated set against regular depictions of the man’s unbelievable abuse, cruelty and savagery. Each episode, indeed, is book-ended by short clips of real survivors sharing their thoughts.
These statements, and interstitial news footage of Savile (the man himself, not Steve Coogan) try to ground the series both in reality and in the reality of the people that Savile abused.
We see the BBC turn a blind eye to gossip about him. We see Margaret Thatcher summon him up for a knighthood. The Royal Family are briefly shown, although their involvement is kept tenuous.
Age, and the swirling rumours, eventually reduce Savile’s career to the point that he is no longer recognised and mobbed by fans. The BBC acknowledge, briefly, that after he dies they air a nauseating sick bag of an homage to him and squash a documentary investigation into his behaviour.
Finally, once dead and buried, the truth comes out and we are shown how he manipulated everyone and wormed his way into the safe embrace of powerful people.
I find myself asking: why was this series made? What purpose does it serve? If you know who Jimmy Savile is, then the very mention of his name should make you sick to your stomach. He is synonymous with abuse and child molestation. Nobody needs this series in order to know what he was.
As Savile is the central character, present in nearly every scene, we could assume that we’re getting an insight into him. But that just isn’t true — the fact is that he was deeply bizarre, as solitary and cold as a deep ocean trench and whatever views into his mind we may have found fascinating died with him. He took his secrets to his grave, right down to his body being found with his fingers crossed for luck.
We learn nothing about the man that we do not already know. He was weird, a monster and not only did lots of people seem to know this but he also came to no justice and faced no consequences.
Perhaps, then, the series is to centre the suffering of his victims, though again there is nothing to learn that isn’t already obvious. The people he abused, mostly children, were traumatised and the damage Savile did over decades is unspeakable.
In its closing notes, and given in a brief introduction at the start of each episode, the series paints Savile as a master manipulator. A man who knew how to deceive, and who took in everyone. Nobody was safe, everyone was tricked.
It is here, I think, that we find the series’ true motivation: Jimmy Savile was a monster, and the rest of us were just marks — pigeons being conned into putting him wherever he wanted to be. Prime Ministers, nurses, BBC heads, parents; all of them, and those of us old enough to remember him in life, were only so many more pawns in his clutches. Being arranged across the chessboard to suit him.
Here, I bring to you the central sin of this programme, and I want to expose to you its primary pillar as the crime that it is. Please consider this:
If a stranger were to punch you in the nose in a public place, and then, when questioned by the police, every witness lies by stating that nothing happened and no crime occurred… who is the villain?
We must not lose sight of the individual who committed the crime — and simultaneously we must identify those who aided them in perpetrating it. Yes: whomever punched you is Bad. Also, however, those bystanders who took that person’s side over the truth are Bad also, albeit in a different way.
In portraying Savile as the singularity around which all of his appalling acts revolve, the BBC are attempting a shameless slight-of-hand. A feint to keep our eyes on the monster, and not those who refused to deal with it.
The simple truth of the matter is that from the 1960s to the 2010s, many people were victims of Savile and many more either saw suspicious or distressing behaviour or were told of it by the victims. The series highlights many times the rumours that dogged Savile throughout his life, yet it does nothing whatsoever to examine why they remained rumours.
In the story, we see the BBC undertake a half-hearted investigation into Savile’s Top of the Pops stewardship that ultimately yields only speculation. Without hard evidence, what can dear old Aunty Beeb do? We also juxtapose this with several scenes of various nurses, over the years, gaslighting their patients by telling them Jimmy is harmless — they just misunderstood him! After all, Jimmy was a master manipulator, you see?
The problem with this narrative is that it just isn’t true. Many people raised concerns, complaints, issues, alleged instances of abuse, reports of distressing behaviour and more — of course they did: we’re talking about a five decade period of predatory behaviour! It was not all hand-waved away by well-meaning nurses and dopey BBC staffers.
Those concerns and allegations were stopped. They were allowed to rise only so far and no further before powerful people decided that was quite enough. That is why the gossip persisted but never went anywhere. Not only was Savile himself litigious, but as a TV star and charity celebrity he was useful to the powerful and they protected him in return.
Jimmy Savile was friends, and generated good publicity and/or money for, Pope Jean-Paul II, Queen Elizabeth, King (nie Prince) Charles III, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, newspaper barons, TV executives, charity boards and more. He was useful to all of these people, and useful he had to remain.
This isn’t a conspiracy, just the powerful acting in their own interest. If a goose is laying golden eggs, who wants to send it to prison for sex with minors? That proposition loses even more appeal when one considers the tarnishing that would surely besmirch ones’ own reputation, for being so friendly with this dreadful individual?
Thus Savile was allowed to continue doing what he did. Allegations were quietened. Investigations were wound down. Articles and exposés were scuttled. This is not secret or classified — these are all events in the record that you can read in In Plain Sight, in online news and even on Savile’s Wikipedia page.
Jimmy Savile was protected by the BBC, by the government, by the Crown and by the Catholic Church. They were all told, repeatedly, that there was a great catalogue of instances of horrible behaviour and they all backed Savile. They chose to see with blind eyes and listen with deaf ears.
They protected him. All of them.
Naturally that isn’t a story the BBC are likely interested in telling. It’s a tremendous shame upon them, morally and artistically. Not only is it the truth, but it’s also a far more potent story.
Instead of centring a deeply depraved man and a small selection of his crimes, and learning nothing about him since those insights went with him when he was sent to Hell, Savile should have been a background character. A Moriarty — the spider at the centre of the web — about whom the actual story proceeds.
The Reckoning should have been about everyone else. It should have been about Savile’s victims and what happened to their complaints. It should have been about the nurses and porters who knew he was a ghoul. It should have been about the BBC staff member who walked in on the man sexually assaulting a 14 year old. It should have been about them and how the reality they saw for themselves was deliberately blocked by powerful people.
It should have been about Thatcher ignoring warnings about Savile. It should have been about BBC executives keeping him on television. It should have been about OBE’s and royal patronage. Pope’s bestowing honorary knighthoods. Newspaper owners burying stories. The BBC having enough material to make a documentary about his abuse just one month after Savile died and then axing it.
The story should be about those things. How powerful British establishments kept Jimmy Savile free and abroad to molest and abuse until the end of his wretched life.
Poignantly, one of the victims ends the series by saying that what Savile did, and was allowed to do, cannot be allowed to happen again. It is with both deep, heartfelt sorrow and despair that I share with you that it will happen again.
We in the UK have not examined how and why Savile was allowed to do what he did or why his continued existence as a public personality was deemed more valuable than all of his victims. The Reckoning is part of that thick coat of whitewash on the national conscience, and it makes me sick.
Unless we have frank, public discussions about who enabled him and why they face no account, then what he did will keep on happening. We will keep on discovering predators that have operated with impunity for decades because they made money and/or good publicity.
Russell Brand. Cyril Smith. Bryan Singer. Bill Cosby. Harvey Weinstein. Jeffrey Epstein. Rolf Harris. Max Clifford. Michael Jackson. The list goes on. These are people who have been doing these things for years and are only the ones we know about.
It will keep on happening, just like it has in the Catholic Church and their endless parade of abused children and shielded priests.
I believe that to be a fitting line to bring our curtain down upon, since Jimmy Savile was, after all, a lifelong, devout Catholic.
