A decade after Savile’s death, a new documentary shares brave, horrific testimony from victims about the ‘huge multi-institutional cover-up’ which continues to this day
Unusually for someone who presented TV and radio programmes for six decades, Jimmy Savile is most significantly represented in the archives by shows he didn’t host. In When Louis Met Jimmy (BBC Two, 2000), Louis Theroux raised questions about longstanding rumours of paedophilia, which were rebuffed but later certified by Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile (ITV, 2012). Screened after the broadcaster’s death, that film triggered institutional investigations concluding he had sexually abused at least 450 people, 80% of whom were young people and children.
The 10th anniversary of Savile’s death in October will greatly add to the TV credits the presenter wouldn’t want to have. Discovery’s Jimmy Savile: The People Who Knew is the first; a Netflix two-parter is due later this year and a BBC docudrama, The Reckoning, is also in production. (Disclosure: I witnessed, and reported to the BBC, an assault by Savile on a BBC staff member in 2006, as recorded in the Dame Janet Smith report of 2016. I was interviewed for the Netflix films.)