The Reckoning - BBC1 - Steve Coogan

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121230465#Comment_121230465

Yeah, there was always something "put on" about him that came across as weird \ off putting. I thought perhaps it was just his "thing" to stand out, like a stand up has a particular way of speaking, standing out from the crowd of other DJs, presenters. Never suspected what it actually masked.

squonk

Steve Coogan was fantastic in this. It goes without saying. The supporting cast were also very strong and as a drama it was fairly well done. I did think it was good linking in the real victims with the dramatisation of their stories incorporated into the narrative.

I couldn’t help feeling it was a bit of an overeggef pudding though. He came across as almost like a cartoon villain. I haven’t read any of the books on him or read too deeply into the facts but I certainly am old enough to remember him on the TV growing up in the 80s. He was always a bit weird and here in Ireland I guess there wasn’t that depth of exposure he’d have gotten in the UK. I wonder if I was in my 20s if I’d have been more repulsed by an old guy hanging around with kids as much as he did? Back when I was a primary school kid and RTE showed Jim’ll Fix It on a Saturday evening at teatime, it looked like the best show ever so some of that stayed with me in forming my image of Saville. TBH he just didn’t cross my mind after I became a teen and from then on until about 2000 when Louis Theroux did his documentary and it emerged Jimmy was weird but Louis missed an open goal at that time you’d think now.

I know now he was a monster and it’s awful to think of so many poor vulnerable kids having their lives upset by what he did, not to mention nurses and other women who received unwanted sexual advances. I don’t deny for a second he was an extremely bad person but all I felt that all that was missing from this portrayal was him twiddling a large moustache and cackling. I felt they were very selective in the narrative they wanted to bring across. Like I say, he was an awful person for sure and doesn’t deserve any kind of rehabilitation of his memory but something felt off and kind of one dimensional about the show. That doesn’t detract from the horrible things he did but I can’t hell feeling there has to be more to the character than they showed on screen

LambshankRedemption

but all I felt that all that was missing from this portrayal was him twiddling a large moustache and cackling.

To be fair, he was like that. The tracksuit and the cigar "now then, now then". He got away with it for far too long with the excuse of "That's just Jimmy being Jimmy". He was an over-the-top persona.

briany

Coogan is fantastic in this, if you'll excuse the use of a positive word for a terrifying portrayal, and the series paints a coherent picture of how Savile was able to get away with his crimes for so long.

It seems like his life will be a case that will be poured over for decades to come. Since the revelations came out, he's gone from being a generally liked public figure to being a real life Freddy Kruger, and not undeservedly.

DublinWriter

Growing up in Baldoyle in the 1970's, Saville hosted an attempt at the world's biggest game of musical chairs there in the old Christian Brother's field. Somewhere around 1979-1981 I think.

briany

After finishing the series, I'd be interested to know which scenes were based on real events and which ones were added for dramatic effect.

Spoiler Warning

Certain scenes in the confessional I can imagine were added for effect, as such places are strictly confidential, but the conversation at the end with the hospital porter as well as his biographer seem like they should have attestation.

JeffreyEpspeen

The actress playing the mother of the young lad who went on Jim'll Fix It. The size of her Wotsits. Almost went through the screen and poked my eyes out.

JeffreyEpspeen

This show's insistence on unnecessarily retconning real-life events to make half of his victims minorities is really bizarre. They wouldn't make black actors portray Ray Teret or Peter Jaconelli so I don't know why they're changing some of his victims races when Savile is never on record as pursuing black or Asian women or children.

I notice this practice has even been criticised by the real-life best friend of the girl who committed suicide.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121252093#Comment_121252093

So after watching the programme the main thing you were outraged by was the sklin colour of the portrayed victims?

Yes I will definitely allow you to come babysit my kids.

JeffreyEpspeen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121252113#Comment_121252113

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12627569/amp/Friend-Pops-victim-Jimmy-Savile-killed-questions-BBC-changed-appearance-suicide-Reckoning-broadcaster-DENIES-supposed-her.html

How's about that then?

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121252205#Comment_121252205

Ah, The Daily Mail. That Bastion of truth and honour.

JeffreyEpspeen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121252527#Comment_121252527

Stock response whenever you use it as a source for something. They didn't make up the quotes from Claire McAlpine's friend though. The victim who was groomed at TOTP tapings was white. And it's absolutely baffling why they'd use an Asian actress as a surrogate for her. As I said, they wouldn't get a black actor to play a character with a negative portrayal like Teret, Jaconelli or Savile's press mole. It's completely transparent that the casting is bowing down to all this woke nonsense that is permeating through all culture.

JP Liz V1

A really tough harrowing watch, vile scum predator in plain sight

Coogan is phenomenal

briany

The series seems to heavily imply that Savile knew on some level that his behaviour was deeply wrong and that part of the reason he did so much charity work was to 'even the score', so to speak. That's not to detract from the other apparent reason for doing that work was to improve his prestige in order to protect himself and have a greater access to victims.

The writers of the show weren't pulling this out of their arses - Savile did an interview one time, I think you can hear the excerpt on A British Horror Story, where he says something like when he dies, St. Peter is going to point out all the bad stuff he did, but Savile could turn around and say, 'but what about this, this and this?' in terms of the charity work and so on.

It reads to me like Savile had a very transactional view of morality, essentially boiling it down to a ledger, and overlooking the ideas of mortal sin or true atonement. I suppose those concepts would have gotten too much in the way of what he wanted to do.

Clearly, he was quite evil indeed, but he's going to remain a topic of fascination for years to come due to his sheer oddness and scheming. His life and personality will be dissected and poured over in much the same way that many infamous serial killers are, again and again. Would he have enjoyed the infamy?

Hyperbollix

Is all BBC's on demand content restricted to Iplayer? Have Sky and can usually watch any series from Ep1 but cannot find The Reckoning to watch from first episode.....

Rowley Birkin QC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121261042#Comment_121261042

His Catholicism also enabled this behaviour.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121261042#Comment_121261042

Psychologists who have examined his life believe he was a full blown psychopath. Never married or had a long term relationship of any description with a woman, even though he appeared to be sexually attracted to adult women, not just younger people.

It's quite bizarre that he presented a children's TV show for decades. Many BBC colleagues said they found him seriously creepy and weird and he nor did he seem to have any actual friends within the channel itself. If ordinary staff and fellow broadcasters knew he was extremely odd and creepy, senior management must surely have been aware of this as well and yet they let him front a kids TV show for many years.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263389#Comment_121263389

Many of the modern stereotypes we identify for paedo's or creepy old men, we get from Jimmy Saville. They didn't fully exist before him. If you wanted to put together a charicature of a creep, a tracksuit and a cigar would be a good start.

Even as a kid I found him creepy. So Im not surprised some people in the BBC found him creepy, but there's a difference between finding someone creepy and all out reporting someone. At one stage Jim'll Fix It was the highest rated show on BBC. It's very difficult to pull a presenter off a high rated show, and even more difficult based only on feelings. "Sorry Jimmy, we are pulling you off the Telly because Mary in Marketing finds you creepy".

JeffreyEpspeen

He was literally groping people on camera. The evidence was right there in black and white if they wanted an excuse to get rid.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264270#Comment_121264270

The evidence was there but you had to go looking for it. The problem is no-one went looking.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263389#Comment_121263389

I'm certainly no psychologist, but I do agree that he seemed to show many the big traits of what I understand psychopathy to be. However, I was referring to the series portrayal of him and hinting at a certain level of inner turmoil about his deviancy. Given that the disclaimer at the start of the programmes would say that the show was pieced together from various factual sources, but with other scenes added for dramatic colour, I'm wondering which category Savile's apparent guilty feeling fell under. In Plain Sight, by Dan Davies, which I haven't read, may go into more detail on this, given that it's his conversations with Savile that are depicted in the series, including Savile stringing him along about a confession, but also a mention of a promise he made to his dead mother, which I thought was interesting. It could, of course, all have just been more of Savile's games.

People have since been lining up to say they found Savile odd and creepy, but someone somewhere must have liked him at some point so that he could become such a big name in radio and TV in the first place.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264381#Comment_121264381

Maybe because they didn't have any sources to back it up but there was very little information about his early life. The dramatisation starts when he's about 30, driving a Rolls Royce and a much loved DJ. A DJ in a club in Leeds would not have been on big money, so where did he get the money for the Rolls Royce? He shared a flat with that guy (can't remember his name), was that for company, or was it to share the cost of renting or something else?

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264677#Comment_121264677

He wasn't just a DJ in a club in Leeds. He seemed to have been managing several dance halls (the Guardian has it as high as 52 venues at his peak) around the north of England at a time when you could be running them seven nights a week if you wanted to.

I haven't read any detailed biographies of Savile, but I have to think enough contemporaries and family members of his have been spoken to that a fairly detailed picture of his early life exists, but because The Reckoning is more about his crimes as an adult, it's not really something the programme went into.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264139#Comment_121264139

I was reading an account from a BBC cameraman that everyone on TOTP hated him, including all the floor staff and production team. He wasn't seen as some sort of loveable eccentric, just a weird and dislikeable creep - it's hard to imagine just what he would have had to done to get himself sacked by BBC management. He was an absolute fraud too - he didn't seem remotely interested in music (witness how in numerous press, TV and radio interviews, he only ever seemed to talk about himself....nothing about music or his favourite artists).

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264975#Comment_121264975

I didn't know that. Having watched a docu-drama I shouldnt have to then go and read a biography of the subject of the programme to get all the relevant facts. From what you say, it still begs the question, how does a seemingly unlikeable individual with no real interest in music get to run 52 niteclubs?

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265093#Comment_121265093

The point I think needs to be made about Savile is that he was likeable to a lot of people, possessing an eccentric charm that probably would have seemed even more exotic at the time it came to prominence. The reason I think that point needs to be made is that predators like him often will open doors for themselves by ingratiating themselves to people. Something that Savile seemed to do very well.

But more to the point, and as the series depicts, he appeared to have no shortage of ambition or gumption, nor any hesitation in walking into a place, sticking his hand out and introducing himself, before doing his whole Savile thing, and I don't mean committing loads of sexual offences, although that did invariably follow.

Hyperbollix

For anyone wanting a deep dive on Savile, this loooooong documentary is the one to watch.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zCOix1iTvg&pp=ygUTc2VhbiBhdHR3b29kIHNhdmlsZQ%3D%3D