Steve Coogan playing Jimmy Savile isn’t tasteless – it’s about real life

However triggering or controversial a subject might be, we as journalists need to cover it objectively, writes Charlotte Cripps

BBC drama ‘The Reckoning’, starring Steve Coogan as Savile, is to air later this year (Shutterstock)

We might all want to forget about Jimmy Savile – it’s sickening stuff. But this week, the disgraced presenter was the subject of a new two-part Netflix documentary, A British Horror Story.

It made my skin crawl; he was a part of the furniture in my childhood home. The cigar-smoking, white-haired presenter of Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It used to invoke feelings of nostalgia until his shocking crimes were revealed following his death in 2011.

The documentary comes ahead of the controversial BBC drama The Reckoning, starring Steve Coogan as Savile, which is to air later this year.

Coogan, who didn’t take on the role “lightly”, has just defended the programme against accusations that it exploits Savile’s countless victims, telling Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch: “If you sweep it under the carpet and just don’t talk about it anymore, then those people are destined to come back.”

The I’m Alan Partridge star is right, and I can’t see why he has to defend it.

The show will follow Savile’s rise to fame, and explore how he was able to commit his crimes unchecked for decades. It might be unsettling viewing, but it’s not tasteless – it’s about real life.

There is always an appetite for these grisly true stories – why is it different from Appropriate Adult about Fred West, The Serpent about serial killer Charles Sobhraj, or Rillington Place about serial killer John Christie? There are bound to be TV shows about Harvey Weinstein and Ghislaine Maxwell before long.

However triggering or controversial a subject might be, we as journalists need to cover such programmes objectively.

Is Coogan good as Savile? He might be a comic, but it doesn’t mean he’s lampooning him. Is it done sensitively? Is it engaging? Is it made well? It can’t just be tainted by Savile’s legacy and written off as vulgar TV.

It might be horrifying, but so was See No Evil: The Moors Murders.

Coogan – who looks like Savile’s double in the TV series – pointed out that Des, starring David Tennant as serial killer Dennis Nilsen, didn’t “attract the same kind of antagonism” as The Reckoning, “even though his crimes were, in some ways, more horrific”.

It’s not a competition, obviously. But Savile’s story is just as valid as any other. We have to judge the series on the merits of its script and its actors. It might be repulsive watching Coogan as Savile – but it might also help us to learn how to stop this from ever happening again.

Yours,

Charlotte Cripps

Senior culture writer