Steve Coogan

Steve Coogan: The nation  enabled Jimmy Savile

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‘The Reckoning’ will explore how the paedophile presenter was able to commit his crimes unchecked for decades

By Ellie Harrison

Steve Coogan has said the backlash to him playing Jimmy Savile in a forthcoming BBC drama is partly because “the nation enabled” the paedophile presenter.

Later this year, mini-series The Reckoning, starring Coogan as Savile, will air on BBC One. When the project was announced last year, many people condemned it, arguing that it exploits Savile’s victims.

The series, which was written by Neil McKay, will explore how the late Top of the Pops host was able to commit his crimes unchecked for decades.

After his death in 2011, hundreds of survivors came forward with stories of abuse by Savile, who used his work at the BBC and at hospitals, prisons and charities to conceal his wrongdoings.

During an appearance on ITV’s Lorraine on Wednesday morning (11 May), Coogan was asked by host Lorraine Kelly whether he was at all hesitant to take on the role.

“Yes,” he said. “I certainly understand the revulsion people have for him, a natural revulsion. I think as with all difficult subject matter, it’s better to talk about it than to not talk about it.”

He added: “People like Dominic West played Fred West. Dennis Nilsen was played recently by David Tennant. People play these monsters, and there wasn’t the same revulsion.

“I think partly it’s because I’m playing someone who either hoodwinked a nation and groomed a nation, or if you’re being slightly less charitable, the nation enabled him.”

Coogan said he believes it’s vital to “contemplate and look back and reflect on why it was allowed to happen, how he was able to do this, and then learn from it” before “you can move on”.

“Look at it before you tell me it’s going to be a load of rubbish,” he urged viewers. “I think it’s very good.”

Coogan emphasised that the BBC is “held accountable” in the series, insisting that there is “no whitewash in this drama”.

Many have accused the BBC of hypocrisy for commissioning the programme. BBC shows Jim’ll Fix It and Top of the Pops allowed Savile close contact with children for years, while senior figures in the corporation heard the stories about him but were unwilling to act and junior employees witnessed his predatory behaviour first-hand.

In 2011, immediately after Savile’s death, two Newsnight reporters began to investigate the stories of abuse, interviewing victims, BBC employees and a former police detective. Their report was scheduled for broadcast in December 2011, but was cancelled on the basis that it would interfere with the shows planned to celebrate Savile over the Christmas period.

The Reckoning’s producers are working with many people whose lives were affected by Savile “to ensure their stories are told with sensitivity and respect”.

“To play Jimmy Savile was not a decision I took lightly,” Coogan previously said in a statement. “Neil McKay has written an intelligent script tackling sensitively a horrific story which, however harrowing, needs to be told.”

Source: Steve Coogan says people are uncomfortable with his Jimmy Savile drama because ‘the nation enabled him’

Michael Winterbottom: ‘Studying English at Oxford University was a mistake’

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The director, 62, tells Michael Segalov about vertigo, risk aversion, shouting to get attention and how Steve Coogan makes things easy

By Michael Segalov
I grew up in a small bungalow on a big housing estate on the edge of Blackburn. My mum was a teacher; my dad was a draftsman in a factory that made television sets. Everything about my childhood was ordinary.

Blackburn’s Unit Four cinema was a scruffy place. In my teens, I went to its fortnightly foreign-language film screenings religiously. I was always desperate to escape, and these films briefly transported me all over the world.

During a childhood swimming lesson, Mum noticed I was lying on the bottom of the pool. A teacher pulled me out of the water. I don’t remember anything, but after that, Mum obsessed about me never venturing deep. I still don’t find swimming in the sea relaxing.

Constant pacing is an awful habit of mine, so my family says. I regularly march around the house while dragging my fingers through my hair and talking to myself.

I left school at 17 and travelled abroad for the first time – I went to pick grapes in the south of France. One night I went to a concert with a German colleague who rode a massive motorbike. Driving us back, I realised he was off his face at 100mph. I clung on for dear life, and haven’t been on a motorbike since.

Steve Coogan makes directing far too easy. We’ve worked together a lot. Naturally, he’s constantly doing things that are both funny and interesting. You can just point a camera at him and leave him to it. I’ve never had more fun than working together on 24 Hour Party People.

Studying English at Oxford University was a mistake. I loved reading, but I wasn’t committed to the rigour of it. Halfway through my studies, I came across a cinema workshop in the city. There and then, I knew what I wanted to do.

I suffer from a particular type of vertigo. I’m fine on planes, or whenever someone else is in charge. But if I’m in control? Even short ladders make me feel vulnerable.

Don’t make a short film, make a long one. That’s the advice I give to young filmmakers. Go out there and shoot something yourself. Not lots of 10 minute things, but a proper one. The only way to learn is to do it.

Generally speaking, I’m risk averse, my mum was over-protective of me as a child. I was the same with my kids in the playground. Caution was bred into me, and it’s far too late to change.

If you get a chance to eat, then you should eat: you never know when the next meal is coming in my business.

People say I have a temper. I certainly do shout a lot. It’s not out of anger, just a way of trying to get attention.

Political extremism pushes people to the edge, and violence sees opposing sides become further polarised. My new film, Shoshana, explores this in Palestine under British colonial rule, but it’s still true in the region today, and around the world. In the past 10 years, those divides have deepened.

The film industry wasn’t accessible when I started out, and it’s still not today. Back then it was a union closed shop. Your career hinged on knowing people. Of course, that remains helpful. Now the best way to start is to go out and start shooting yourself, or to work a lot for free. Either way, that requires big money.

I’m entirely unsurprising as a man. Everything about me is, I think, rather obvious and straightforward.

Shoshana + Michael Winterbottom Q&A plays as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival 2023 which takes place in London cinemas from 9-19 November, with a national tour taking place from 9-30 November and a selection of films available online from 20-27 November

 

Source: Michael Winterbottom: ‘Studying English at Oxford University was a mistake’

The Reckoning episode two review: How Jimmy Savile became leader of British entertainment’s parade of shame and horror

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TV review: At moments The Reckoning is too awful to sit through. At the same time, Steve Coogan’s ability to recreate Jimmy Savile’s cheesy anticharm is uncanny

By Ed Power

The horror continues to build throughout the second episode of The Reckoning, the BBC’s often unwatchable meditation on the sins of Jimmy Savile (BBC One, Tuesday, 9pm). We’ve moved forward to the 1970s when Top of the Pops was the biggest brand on television and BBC DJs such as Savile were superstars, almost as famous as the singers with whom they rubbed shoulders.

The Reckoning is once more a showcase for Steve Coogan, whose Savile is a grinning predator, seemingly without conscience. The script continues to go easy on the BBC, however. In one scene, for instance, Savile is hauled in for questioning after a young girl he meets on Top of the Pops and subsequently abuses kills herself.

He first attempts to gaslight his bosses. “It’s a sad fact a lot of these young girls are so obsessed with fame they don’t know truth from fantasy,” he says. But when a lawyer later grills him, it is made clear that Savile holds all the cards.

He’s the biggest name in show business – is the BBC going to to throw him overboard? “You need to think about who it is you’re talking to,” he says to the barrister, who subsequently clears Savile of all wrongdoing. The message is that the fault lies entirely with Savile and his almost supernatural powers of bullying and persuasion – rather than with the corporation, which shrugged and moved on.

Savile knew people were on to him – and so created the fiction that rumours about his behaviour were fuelled by jealousy. “You get naysayers trying to stop you, by making up stories about things that didn’t happen,” he tells a journalist friend after catching wind that one of the papers is preparing a story about his activities.

Everyone else fawns over Savile. He receives an OBE. The BBC has him host Songs of Praise. The hospital manager who once disapproved of Savile is now delighted by his appearances. This is the megastar who arranged visits by the Beach Boys and Roy Orbison. Yes, his behaviour can be unusual from time to time, “but that’s Jimmy”.

The Reckoning makes for strange viewing. At moments, it is simply too awful to sit through. At the same time, writer Neil McKay’s evocation of the beige dreariness of the 1970s is uncanny – as is Coogan’s ability to recreate Savile’s cheesy anticharm. He had presence, without question. But how someone who gave off such creepy vibes ever ended up on the airwaves is hard to fathom – one more mystery destined to linger for as long as Savile’s name is part of the British entertainment’s parade of shame and horror.

Source: The Reckoning episode two review: How Jimmy Savile became leader of British entertainment’s parade of shame and horror

The Reckoning: Drama about Jimmy Savile’s depraved trail of destruction lets BBC off the hook

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Steve Coogan delivers a powerfully slithering performance as Savile but The Reckoning seems uninterested in the institutional indifference that enabled the DJ’s years of sex abuse

It’s hard to fathom what the BBC hopes to achieve with The Reckoning (BBC One, Monday, 9pm), its four-part dramatisation of the evils perpetuated by Jimmy Savile.

The crimes of Savile, for decades one of the broadcaster’s biggest stars, are well documented. Less so are the alleged cover-ups at the BBC and elsewhere that allowed him prey with impunity on young people. But this controversial four-part chronicling of Savile’s loathsome rise to national treasure status seems uninterested in the institutional indifference that enabled the DJ and presenter become a depraved figure hiding – if that’s even the word – in plain sight. The unspoken message is that this man was a depraved force of nature: who could have stopped him?

As Savile, Steve Coogan delivers a powerfully slithering performance. However, it is also slightly cartoonish: there is a hint of a demon Alan Partridge about his Savile. That isn’t to deny the horror as, buzzard-like, he circles his victims.

A scene at Leeds General Infirmary where he approaches a young girl while dressed as a jester is perhaps the most stomach-turning in the first of four episodes (part two follows on Tuesday with the concluding instalments to follow next week), though, to be sure, it has lots of competition.

But it feels important to separate Coogan’s portrayal – and it is honest and lacking in vanity – from the manner in which Savile’s monstrousness is framed. One striking decision by writer Neil McKay is to explore his abuse not in the context of his career at the BBC but through the prism of his Catholicism.

In an early sequence in which an ageing Savile holds forth to a biographer, he talks about feeling the hand of the “big fella” on his shoulder. In flashbacks, his mother is framed by a crucifix in practically every scene. Would McKay have obsessed over Savile’s faith had he been a devout Anglican? You have to wonder.

Steve Coogan as Jimmy Savile
Steve Coogan as Jimmy Savile

The Reckoning opens with interviews with four victims. “When I heard he’d died I was actually pleased that horrible specimen was dead,” says one. “He groomed a whole nation,” adds another. But he also groomed the BBC and it’s telling how incurious The Reckoning is, in part one at least, about the broadcaster’s role in his rise. It has been confirmed that The Reckoning will not cover the suppression of a Newsnight report into his crimes shortly after his death. But why not make a drama about that scandal rather than put Savile where he always wanted to be: squarely in the spotlight?

Savile was wicked and degenerate – these facts are plain as day. But what about the broadcaster which beamed him into livingrooms across Britain and Ireland for decades? And yes, again, that Newsnight investigation – an incident hat has echoes of the subterfuge of the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. In the wake of recent claims about another former BBC employee, Russell Brand, it is disappointing that a series about one of Britain’s favourite entertainers should be so lacking in soul-searching.

Source: The Reckoning: Drama about Jimmy Savile’s depraved trail of destruction lets BBC off the hook