\u201cApologies,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not in disguise. A migraine just descended. I\u2019ve got lights in my eyes and a pain at the back of my head, so I\u2019m trying to simulate a darkened room.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fact that McKay declines an offer to defer the interview \u00ad\u00ad\u2013 or leave it to Jeff Pope, producer of The\u00a0Reckoning, who now joins us, fully lit, in another digital window \u2013 testifies to his desire to talk about a series that, in the three years since it was announced, has been subject to regular negative coverage led by The Sun newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly, we realise how controversial the project is,\u201d says Pope. \u201cWhen I asked Steve to do it, he didn\u2019t immediately say yes, but talked to his family and friends. And they divided into two camps \u2013 you absolutely must do this, and you absolutely must not. There was no one in the middle. And it was that polarity that made him want to take it on.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Steve](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/09\/Steve-Coogan-2a07472.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Steve")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>McKay acknowledges that he and Pope are used to a \u201cdegree of hostility\u201d. Titans of true-crime TV drama, their previous collaborations include This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper and dramas about the serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley (See No Evil: the Moors Murders) and Fred and Rose West (Appropriate Adult).<\/p>\n
As a result, they have had a long time to consider the common complaint that horrific crimes shouldn\u2019t be turned into peak-time fiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve faced that throughout my career,\u201d says Pope. \u201cMy view is that the quickest way to invite something like this to happen again is to ignore it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI passionately believe we have to explore stories like Savile. The same is true with Fred West, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. The theme of a lot of stuff that Neil and I do is that it\u2019s a warning from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
McKay adds: \u201cI think what drama can do \u2013 which documentaries can\u2019t \u2013 is put you right in the middle of these scenes. Savile started out as a dance-hall DJ in Manchester. And DJs enjoy controlling a room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he was a con man. What we try to show is how, in successive institutions \u2013 Leeds General Infirmary, the pop business, the BBC, eventually Margaret Thatcher\u2019s private office and beyond \u2013 the mechanics of Savile\u2019s con worked. That\u2019s what I think only drama can give you.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was, though, a documentary \u2013 Exposure: the Other Side of Jimmy Savile \u2013 broadcast on ITV in October 2012, a year after Savile\u2019s death, that first exposed allegations of serious sexual assaults on children and adults that expensive lawyers and strong connections with the media and police had kept hidden during the presenter\u2019s lifetime.<\/p>\n
The film triggered multiple investigations that ultimately revealed hundreds of victims at hospitals and schools where Savile volunteered, and at the BBC. The position of the corporation was complicated by the fact that it had broadcast hagiographic obituaries of Savile, but pulled a planned Newsnight report into his paedophilia.<\/p>\n
Pope understands why some question the BBC\u2019s suitability to broadcast a Savile drama. \u201cIt\u2019s important to understand that this is not a BBC production for the BBC. It\u2019s an ITV Studios production for the BBC.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is a small but crucial point. Although it may be of little interest to viewers, the fact is that major TV networks now make shows for each other. \u201cSo, in that respect, it is independent,\u201d says Pope.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sends a signal to the outside world that this isn\u2019t the BBC \u2018marking its own homework\u2019. And, to amplify that, I can honestly say that there was never any case of the BBC saying, \u2018You can\u2019t put that in because it makes us look bad,\u2019 which I know is what people suspect. But that never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition, explains McKay, \u201cOn all these dramas, we don\u2019t even begin to do anything until we\u2019ve spoken to people who experienced the crimes and we sense that we have a consensus to proceed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each episode of The Reckoning is bookended by interviews with four people whose assaults by Savile are dramatised. A newspaper report suggested that the BBC \u201cordered\u201d these inclusions to make the drama more sympathetic to victims. Totally untrue, says Pope: \u201cThe real victims were in there from the first draft. We taped their interviews and then Neil used some of their words in the scripts. Later, we re-interviewed them on camera. But they were always there as a concept.\u201d<\/p>\n
These Savile survivors are able to be shown because they have waived the lifelong legal anonymity that those who have suffered sex crimes are offered. Most victims haven\u2019t, which is why, explains Pope, there are some composite characters and scenes: \u201cPeople will obviously ask, \u2018Why are there invented sequences?\u2019 And the answer is that there are hundreds of Savile victims, most of whom can\u2019t be publicly identified. But by combing through the hundreds of stories, you see a pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Steve](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/10\/The-Reckoning-Jimmy-Savile-15cba35.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Crucial to McKay\u2019s research were those who encountered Savile not as a victim but as an employee or friend. \u201cThere was a man called Charles Halligan, a fellow Catholic who knew Savile for most of his life and worked with him at Leeds Infirmary. I knew he was dead but managed to find his widow, Beryl, and got to know her in the last years of her life. She\u2019s played by Siobhan Finneran<\/a> in the drama and she and Charles are sort of us, the viewer.<\/p>\n \u201cCharles is the one who\u2019s gullible and taken in. Beryl \u2013 and this comes directly from her own experience \u2013 had his number very early on, but her husband used to say, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s just Jimmy!\u2019 So that becomes an important dynamic in the drama.\u201d<\/p>\n No doubt viewers of The Reckoning will speculate to what extent Savile accepted guilt and expected exposure. McKay was strongly guided by Beryl Halligan on this: \u201cShe told me that every Mother\u2019s Day she, Charles and Savile would go to Killingbeck, the Roman Catholic cemetery in Leeds, and they would put flowers on their mothers\u2019 graves, which were near to each other.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd Savile used to say, with reference to his family burial plot, \u2018I\u2019ll be going in there one day.\u2019 But Beryl knew Savile right to the end, and she said that, later on, he suggested to her that he wouldn\u2019t go in the family grave at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, as requested in his will, Savile was buried in Scarborough\u2019s Woodlands Cemetery in a gold coffin under a triptych headstone with the epitaph: \u201cIt was good while it lasted.\u201d At the request of his surviving relatives, that grave was levelled in October 2012, after the exposure of his crimes, and is now unmarked.<\/p>\n \u201cBeryl,\u201d says McKay, \u201ccame to the conclusion he didn\u2019t want his dead family polluted by his presence. That it was a sort of confession. And that strain runs throughout the drama. I think he thought that the past would catch up with him; it was a race against the grave. The grave won, much to the fury of his victims and survivors. But I think he knew that it was coming and made sure to avoid the bulldozers going to his parents\u2019 grave.\u201d<\/p>\n Everyone, whether Catholic or not, struggles to understand how such a prolific and terrible criminal was simultaneously a Mass-going Catholic, one who probably feared that only his prolific charitable works might prevent him from an eternity of hellfire.<\/p>\n Savile\u2019s Catholicism was revealingly idiosyncratic: he \u201cjokes\u201d in an autobiography that if St Peter won\u2019t let him in through the pearly gates, he\u2019ll break St Peter\u2019s fingers. Do we think that, as Catholics are required to, Savile made a deathbed confession?<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t answer that,\u201d says McKay. \u201cPeople will have to watch the drama. But it\u2019s fair to say the shape of the whole thing goes towards the deathbed and the breaking of St Peter\u2019s fingers. It was just a matter of chance I found someone who could bear witness.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t reveal the source of this, but I talked to a person who was in there at the very, very end and is a Catholic, and you\u2019re absolutely right \u2013 his [Savile\u2019s] faith stayed with him.\u201d<\/p> Other revealing insights came to light when McKay visited Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands, where Savile kept a cottage. \u201cI got to know the guy who was effectively the caretaker and also did various alterations. Savile got him to arrange a mirror so that, from his chair, he could see coaches coming down the mountain pass from Glencoe.<\/p>\n \u201cThe drivers of the tourist buses would say, \u2018Coming up on the right here, the home of Jimmy Savile. And, if you\u2019re lucky, you might see him.\u2019 Savile, having seen the bus in the mirror, would go out onto the balcony and wave and throw his hands up.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd because Savile, at the end, was lonely, this chap would go to sit with him and Savile would ramble a bit and say, \u2018I\u2019ve never had a computer because that\u2019s how they got Gary [Glitter].\u2019 But the most interesting thing was that Savile said that, in the dark at night, he feared there were bad men on the mountains who would come down and slit his throat. And that seems to me to go to something very deep in his psyche.<\/p>\n \u201cI put that in the drama but there wasn\u2019t bloody space for it and we couldn\u2019t afford to film at Glencoe. I\u2019ve never told anyone this, except Jeff. But I think it tells you a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Conspiracy theories have suggested that the unusually long three years it has taken from The\u00a0Reckoning\u2019s commission to transmission resulted from delays caused by sudden BBC nerves about the subject matter, but Pope insists not.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat led to such a prolonged post-production period is that, at any given time, we were working in about four different dimensions. Is what we show on screen going to be triggering for victims? Also, there are paedophiles and perverts out there; we don\u2019t want them to find \u2018useful\u2019 anything we put on screen. And, generally, there was the question of tone.<\/p>\n \u201cIn order to understand Savile, you have to humanise him to some degree, but you also have to see something of his depravity. So, in every scene, there were multiple decisions of taste and tone.\u201d<\/p>\n In the first episode, when Savile, dressed as a court jester, assaults a hospital patient, the camera is far away, at the other end of the ward \u2013 is the offence implied by reactions? \u201cThat\u2019s a perfect example,\u201d Pope agrees. \u201cThe audience needs to know what happened, but they don\u2019t need to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n The star of The Reckoning, Steve Coogan, has been an accomplished mimic since his Spitting Image days, and, in costume, he also bears a startling physical resemblance to Savile. Did he, like some actors, remain in character at all times on set?<\/p>\n \u201cI had several lunches with him during filming,\u201d says Pope. \u201cAnd it was someone who looked like Jimmy Savile but sounded like Steve. When we had victims on set \u2013 at their request and with all safeguarding support in place \u2013 Steve would come round the corner and you could feel the intake of breath because it was such an extraordinary similarity. So he made a point of saying, \u2018I\u2019m Steve,\u2019 and he would have a conversation with them as Steve.\u201d<\/p>\n The Savile drama coincides with another series about a Yorkshire-born psychopath, Peter Sutcliffe. The title of ITV1\u2019s The Long Shadow<\/a> deliberately omits the criminal\u2019s name and press nickname, while the BBC drama also rejects using the famous name in favour of a title that suggests a coming to terms with the story by victims, institutions \u2013 and the drama\u2019s makers.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a girl near us, growing up,\u201d says Pope, \u201cwho went on Jim\u2019ll Fix It and we were all really jealous. Grotesquely, her fix-it was to meet Rolf Harris. That\u2019s absolutely a true story. So it\u2019s sobering and astonishing, five decades on, to be on the eve of showing who Savile really was.\u201d<\/p> ![\"Charles](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/10\/446059-1-20335e6-e1696600144523.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413\" "\\"The")
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