When Jimmy Savile was found dead in his Leeds flat in 2011, those who discovered him noticed the most peculiar thing: his fingers were crossed. It would be revealed in the months and years afterwards that this was a man who had, over the course of six decades, sexually abused hundreds of children and women. He had used his position as one of the BBC’s top entertainers, and his connections in the church, the NHS, the royal family and the government, to facilitate and conceal his crimes. He had hidden in plain sight, hinting at his actions in numerous interviews and autobiographies, but had gone to the grave without trial. Having been raised in a deeply Catholic setting, he constantly tried to mitigate for – and distract from – his mortal sins with his charity work. If he crossed his fingers tight enough, in his final moments, would he be granted access to heaven?
Savile is at the centre of BBC One’s sweeping new drama, The Reckoning, which charts the paedophile’s life and crimes, from his early days as a disc jockey in Manchester dancehalls to his lonely death aged 84. Steve Coogan plays the bleach-blonde, shell suit-wearing predator, in a series from true-crime veterans Neil McKay and Jeff Pope. Scenes of the presenter’s depravity are interspliced with combative interviews between Savile and the author of In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile, Dan Davies (played by Mark Stanley), who, out of every journalist that spoke to the man, probably got closest to the truth. And, although the show is a drama, real survivors of Savile – Darien, Kevin, Sam and Susan – are interviewed on camera, their stories brought to harrowing life.
