Steve Coogan to play disgraced TV personality Jimmy Savile in BBC drama
Though rumors surrounded Savile in life, the extent of his many crimes were exposed after he died.
Aux News Jimmy Savile
Steve Coogan (from the Trip movies and the various Alan Partridge projects) has signed on to play disgraced British TV host Jimmy Savile in an upcoming BBC One drama series called The Reckoning. This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which notes that Savile was “one of the biggest stars of British television,” despite rumors of sexual misconduct that plagued him throughout the later years of his career, hosting various shows for the BBC—which, again, is producing this series about him. When he died in 2011, though, it was revealed that the rumors were true and that Savile had sexually abused possibly as many as “hundreds of child victims” over the years, with the BBC and charitable organizations he had worked with being accused of either ignoring or actively suppressing allegations about his behavior. Executive producer Jeff Pope says the point of The Reckoning will be “to explore how Savile’s offending went unchecked for so long” and will hopefully “ensure such grimes never happen again.” Coogan, who Pope says has a “unique ability” to tackle this kind of character, adds that taking this role on was not a decision he “took lightly,” but he says the story “needs to be told” and that the script handles it all in a sensitive way.
Director Sandra Goldbacher also describes The Reckoning as a chance to give a voice to Savile’s victims, “the people who inspired this project.” A Deadline story also notes that the team behind the show are “working closely with people whose lives were impacted by Savile to ensure their stories are told with sensitivity and respect.” Deadline also notes that the drama series is already controversial based on its subject matter alone, and this casting news—and also everything else about it—surely won’t change that. Neither Deadline or The Hollywood Reporter says when The Reckoning will start to air.
120 Comments
As long as there are grimes there will always be griminals.
And even worse, they’re breeding with Elon Musk!
Spawning. Spawning is the correct and scientifically accurate term.
Apparently they split, and I’m ashamed I know that.
I hadn’t heard, but looking it up, it seems so.
They’ll never be able to wash away these sins
Alistair McGowan played Savile for a play, too. He’s an impressionist by trade, and apparently it was so uncanny that they only used details of pictures of the performance because it could trigger people otherwise. It sounds more like tasteless marketing than anything else, but I had the chance to see it and it *was* creepily good.
Christ that sounds creepy. Talented but Jesus.
More than just about any criminal out there, Savile really bothers me, because he died thinking he’d gotten away with it. If only he had lived a further year or so, so he could have witnessed it all burn.
Would he have? I thought part of the whole reason his crimes were exposed after he died is that he no longer had the protection of his spin doctors to deflect inquiry.
Why would simply dying stop his spin doctors from doing their thing?
Dead men rarely pay their spin doctors.
Well, Sir Jimmy did get away with it, and never had to pay a price in life. What has to happen (and I’m not sure if it did) is that everybody who enabled him, who covered for him, every person who looked the other way when they left him alone in a fucking crippled children’s hospital overnight, needs to face (legal) justice.
ha like they would shoot the queen.
Sadly, he did get away with it, but at least his reputation was forever tarnished.
At the very least, the revelations that came to light after Savile’s death spurred on Operation Yewtree, the police op that took down a number of high profile pedos and sexual predators. I don’t know if that happens without Savile’s death and such.
He did get exhumed from his grave tbf, which may have some kind of abstract implications in the afterlife. Hopefully.
Regrettably this exhumation didn’t happen, though there were plans as late as 2015, after which that were, AFAIK, scuttled. His ostentatious tombstone was taken down and crushed to bits, so the bastard is rotting in an unmarked grave.
Grab a shovel and meet me at the grave in half an hour. We can fix this.
His grave literally said it was good while it lasted. What a fucker.
It came to light because he died. Had he lived longer, he would have just gone on being protected. The fucking guy was buddies with Prince Charles and had a knighthood.
My favorite Alan Partridge project song is probably “Eye in the Sky.”
Here’s some breaking news:FIX THE FUCKING KINJA LINKS, NOTIFICATIONS, AND EVERYTHING ELSE.
So I tried to submit a support ticket to the Kinja ZenDesk support link on the About page and got:Oops, this help center no longer existshttps://kinja.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000106393Also, the Kinja HelpDesk (SalesForce) link is a completely broken 404.
https://kinja.desk.com/customer/portal/emails/newSeems they are no longer interested in loyal customer feedback in any way at this point. I haven’t went the regular email route yet, but I’m assuming it will just come back as “undeliverable.”[email protected]
I wrote there too and was completely ignored. I promise it was a very friendly email.
Lol Zendesk. Like ServiceNow for retards.
It’s almost like the private equity shitheads who own this site don’t want it to succeed…
I’m not sure how to characterize “success” in this case, but if maintaining the site costs $$ then the owners will absolutely cease doing that. The other part is the satisfaction they derive from wringing every last bit of joy out of our lives.
Dude, the writers have no control over Kinja. Noone who’s in a position to do anything about it reads these comments. You’re basically being that guy who shouts at shop assistants/support advisors. Don’t be that fucking guy.
There are no avenues or forums to communicate how basic functions of the website do not work. There is no communication whatsoever from The AV Club editorial team about the disgraceful state of the website. At this point, what else are you supposed to do and is it surprising that people want to vent their frustration?
“There are no avenues or forums to communicate how basic functions of the website do not work.”They know, thay have to use it for a living.“At this point, what else are you supposed to do?”Not this.
“At this point, what else are you supposed to do?”Not this.Signed, the Kinja Help Desk.
With an attitude like that, you should work for Kinja’s helpdesk.
I suspect that doesn’t exist any more.
Then get Peter Noone on the line!!!
Hey, it’s Ernie the Kinja Tech!But seriously, you’re completely right. Even complaining about easily-fixed typos accomplishes nothing here, so complaining about technical issues seems even more pointless. I don’t blame any of the writers or staff for this. Working for these Kinja sites has to be demoralizing.
I can’t star this enough (he wrote, unsure if you’ll even be able to see it / interact with it in any way).
Pretty sure “let it die” is the operating philosophy here.
It sucks when I get an interesting response to my comment, and there’s no easy way to continue the conversation. Hats off to those of you who actually go to the trouble. It’s even worse if the responder is in the greys. Maybe it’s my error, but I can never locate the greyed response, whether I turn on the “pending” replies or not.Anyway this is a public apology to anyone’s thoughtful reply that I’ve failed to respond to or even un-grey.
I’ve taken to Ctrl+F’ing for “Cough” to find every instance of my name. That is, of course, after manually expanding all the damn replies.
It’s not your error, it’s almost impossible to deal with respondents in the greys. We can’t respond to thoughtful posts and we can’t dismiss trolls.I honestly think all of these sites will be gone shortly after the first of the year.
The reveal of his crimes was also what finally put Gary Glitter away for good, due to their close association and watching each other’s backs.
Jesus Christ.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of Jimmy Savile until today, but every single one makes it quite clear he was a fuckin’ deviant sex monster.(I won’t subject you to the horror of seeing his face, so google at your own risk)
In a way, his odd appearance kind of added to his appeal/defense. This guy may look like a weirdo but he’s actually a nice funny man who helps others! Whereas the reality was that he was even creepier than he looked.
There was a heavy feeling of “come on, he looks so creepy, there’s no way he could be a real creep! It would be too obvious!”
One really sad side effect is that it perpetuates the “looks like a weirdo, must be a sex offender” assumptions of the masses.
bullshit
Is that what Michael Jackson was up to?
In that case, I hope that doesn’t apply to John Waters as well.
I just looked :(. And JFC he was Sir Jimmy Savile 😮 !
That’s nothing. This cunt is a prince:
Yeah, he famously had Christmas Dinner with Margaret Thatcher every year. To say he had powerful friends is a severe understatement.
It’s like Charlie Brooker said of him, in his prime TVs were small and blurry and you didn’t think too much about him, later on when the revelations came about TVs let you see him in HD and that just made it even worse.
I remember the time I saw some Mick Jagger music video that was shot in HD.No one…no one needs to see that. There isn’t enough vaseline in the world…
Simultaneously great casting and a terrible idea.
Very brave step by Coogan as this could go very badly wrong.
He’s perfect for the role but I don’t think there’s a way for it to go right.Maybe in an alternate universe where Saville wasn’t a creep and this is a hagiography.
Like his Chechen version of Dora The Explorer?
I’m a fan of Coogan with all his foibles and I think underneath it all he is a decent man. I admire him for taking this on as I think intellectually he knows the sensitivity required.
Foibles? I’m not sure I know where you coming from there.
I once dated a lass who lived in the same neighbourhood as Jimmy Saville, and one day we passed him outside a local Italian restaurant. I assume doing some kind of promo, as he was with a photographer, in front of a sports car, in one of his trademark red tracksuits with a cigar in his mouth, and had both his arms around two young buxom ladies. Louis Theroux’s Jimmy Saville documentary really shone a light on how weird Saville was, if anyone needs or wants a bit more context. Otherwise: former presenter and DJ, did a long-running show where he ‘fixed’ kids requests to do daft stuff like ‘go on a magic carpet’ or ‘eat lunch on a rollercoaster’. Creepy pervert.
I looked up Louis Theroux: Savile and it’s supposed to be on Netflix but it wasn’t. I’ll keep looking. Thanks for the info.
It’s worth noting that there are two documentaries. The first – which features Saville himself and is the more fascinating (and the one most people refer to) – is from his When Louis Met… series. The Louis Theroux: Saville documentary is from after Saville died and features Theroux grappling with Saville’s legacy and his small role in it. It’s also great (there’s one segment featuring a Saville mega fan who refuses to accept his guilt) but you’ll get more out of it if you’ve seen the first.
I rewatched the When Louis Met Saville yesterday and he’s a profoundly weird and pathetic character. He never had a girlfriend and lived with his mother as an adult until she died. Just a thin shell of a man, who seems briefly to regret being good at masking his feelings.
Someone appears to have uploaded it to Vimeo:
Even as a little kid, when ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ was prime time tv that every kid my age wished they could be a part of, I never liked that weird old fucker. Not one bit. I know you should never trust a book by its cover, but when that cover looks like Jimmy Fucking Saville… He was BLATANTLY a fucking dirty old creep. Everyone thought it. The worst thing is everyone who knew him knew it and didn’t do a thing about it.I am genuinely looking forward to seeing Coogan’s portrayal of Saville.
This reminds me of Chris Langham. Some of his works had a LOT of pedophilia jokes in them. Now you might argue “never judge a man by his jokes”, but in his case his arrest and conviction proved that those jokes were red flags.
Or bands recruiting members to join a “band of pedophiles” and writing songs about having sex with underage girls…
A relative of mine lived in Headlingley in Leeds where Saville had his flat, and apparently it was well known in the area that anybody who had a bad word to say about him would get a visit from his heavies, who would ask politely that they cease and desist.I heard about this when I was a kid and wondered why that weird kids’ entertainer on TV needed to enforce his will with thugs.I guess now we know.
He started in the nightclub scene and part of his method was getting to know people then using blackmail and intimidation, so despite the wacky old man persona, he was always a nasty gangster.
“Weird” is lowballing it just a tad.
Fucking hell ‘Disgraced’ doesnt begin to cover it.
This serial child molester sounds like a real jerk
The more I hear about this Hitler guy, the less I like him.
Yeah, but his ratings….
The worst part was the hypocrisy.
Don’t forget the elderly, the disabled…
Its like calling Myra Hindley unpopular or the Titanic a fenderbender.
It’s a Norm McDonald reference.
Or Titanic a popular movie
Right? Also, he wasn’t “plagued” with rumors, he was justly accused while avoiding consequences through power, influence, and third-party cowardice.
Right. He was pedophile sociopath, if not a psychopath.
I suspect this is more a favor to Steve Coogan who doesn’t deserve (so far as I know) to have the real description attached to his search engine results for the rest of time.
“the Trip movies”uh… The Trip is a tv show with for seasons so far and not movies
All four seasons have been adapted into and released as movies.
Will this focus on the positive or negative parts of his career?
That was FRESH!
I hope that Savile himself is not the focus of this, despite casting Coogan. An exploration of the Dame Janet Smith review and what it says about permissive celebrity cult and culture is of value in a dramatic format; while much of what happened would probably not again, it would be very naive to think that celebrities are now truly accountable. Savile himself doesn’t really deserve the oxygen, frankly.(Dan Davies’ In Plain Sight is a very good biography of Savile, incidentally)
That’s the only way it could work, or at least the only way I could stomach watching it.
Let’s not forget his cosy friendship with the soon-to-be King Charles.
Jeff Pope is a social commentator who fundamentally understands drama. This is raw emotional territory and Pope is one of the very few populist writers that I would trust with a story that demands sensitivity, understanding and even anger. Pope’s recent television work is truly exceptional and his uncanny ability to get inside the minds of a range of subjects highlights his empathy and compassion. “A Confession” and “Little Boy Blue” were heartwretching portraits of the impact of violence on local communities. “Hatton Garden” got the balance right that so many British crimes films get so wrong: showing the charm of these thugs without ever losing sight of their ruthlessness.I look forward to a piece that is raw and angry and applaud Coogan’s bravery in tackling a role that – with his skill – will be horribly familiar to audiences.
I suspect that’s the way they’ll play it – framing it as some sort of “inside the mind of a monster” thing from Savile’s perspective would be too tasteless, even for the BBC, who love doing tasteless things and pretending they’re shooting for something higher.
Do a google image search on Jimmy Saville if you dont know what he looks like. He is basically the stereotype for a serial killer/child molester.
Disgraced is putting it lightly. The man was a pedophile, its like finding out Mr Rogers was a serial killer. Its bloody terrible.
I think it’s worse, on account that there were rumors for years and years and had countless people covering up for him until he died and the dam broke.Mr Rogers has had reporters rooting around for ages and ages to see what dirt they could find on him, only to find that he was indeed very much the man he played on TV and his reward for being a real-life unicorn was to die painfully from cancer that ate him alive. What a world.
Apparently also necrophiliac… and according to one account I read, he was permitted to spend a night with the corpse of his own mother.
I’m very much in agreement with you btw… below is the piece I referred to. In fact it was a whole week he spent with her corpse, after many years of her later life saying that she didn’t trust him. :/
Paedophile Jimmy Savile believed his mother ‘never trusted him’ and expected he’d be jailed – Mirror Online
“Steve Coogan (from the Trip movies and the various Alan Partridge projects).”It’s kind of sad that you have to print his bona fides but thanks.
He’s had such an interesting career. For me he’ll always be Tony Wilson from 24 Hour Party People.
If you haven’t seen the Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan segment in the Coffee and Cigarettes movie, it’s brilliant. That’s Steve Coogan for me (I realize he’s probably not like that IRL)…
To me he’ll always be The Parole Officer 🙂 …oh and also in that flick with Dame Judi Dench.
That flick with Dame Judi Dench created Oscar-Nominee Steve Coogan! (And is also really good)
Philomena. I’ve watched it more than a half a dozen times now. Some ‘portions’ I gotta FF past, but still a great flick.
I thought he was the guy who sang “You Can Do Magic”
The problem with these big-ticket, flagship “ripped from the headlines” type melodramas that the BBC spits out with a mechanical regularity is that they don’t actually interrogate the issues or circumstances around the subject they depict. It’s just moments of vile glumness, punctuated by rousing triumphalist “we’re not gonna take it” speeches, and a certain kind of audience member punches the air in vicarious righteousness, and everyone else goes “I’d rather be watching SVU”. They just boil down fascinating challenging things into (allegedly) Big TV Moments, as though they’re being shot with a view to being edited into an end-of-year wrap-up montage rather than a view to making something edifying.
With “A Confession” and “Little Boy Blue”, Jeff Pope has proved himself an extremely fine writer who goes beyond cliche and melodrama that look at the heart of political and social concerns.Your concerns are misplaced.
He was more than just a TV personality. He was a national institution.
Now, now, that’s Steve Coogan from Hamlet 2.
How much of this is just BBC trying to keep hold of the narrative? Why otherwise would they feel the need to do this?
To try to right a wrong they are massively culpable for?
Possibly, but I would be more inclined to trust that if it were a straight documentary. That said, fictionalizing these kinds of stories always seems distasteful to me, no matter who does it.
Like you I live in hope.
Just binge-watched Coogan in the excellent three-part “Stephen” last week.
Can we get a movie about this little guy instead? He’s not even British, let alone connected to the BBC, but he’s less scary looking.
Props to Coogan. This is not a role I can imagine many actors lining up for. Personally though I think anything about Savile is too fucking dark for me to watch.
Saw him on a chat show a few years before he kicked and the interviewer asked him “so what are you doing these days?” His response? “Anything I can get my hands on” cue a smattering of nervous laughter from the audience…
I’ve nothing against this show being made – but being made by the BBC is outrageous. This is a station that even after he died, in the last 10 years, still covering up (they dropped a newsnight investigation which another broadcaster picked up). The rumours were everywhere for decades and they kept on wheeling him out and silencing those that knew. No matter how ‘good’ this could be as a drama; I would 100% questioning its impartiality and if its a reconn made by a very guilty party. Its like a damning documentary on Trump made by FoxNews in 2030. This has to be made by another broadcaster or streaming powerhouse, who are seperate from the BBC.
I do hope this isn’t the BBC trying to paper over the fact that they ignored so many of the accusations against him. Honestly makes me sick to my stomach every time i realise i shook the guys hand when he came to our town to commemorate a plaque for the local sports centre way back in the 80’s.
i feel icky about this. it’s too soon. just feels like people’s trauma is getting fucked over for the sake of making a TV show.
This should be a barrel of laughs.
Incidentally it’s good to see Rate My Takeaway reclaiming the “Now then” catchphrase, for all of Leeds.