Steve Coogan’s take on the serial sex offender is astonishingly spooky. But questions remain as to whether it should have been made – and whether the BBC has given itself too easy a ride
There were no cameraphones when Margaret Thatcher spent Christmas Day at Chequers with Jimmy Savile in the 1980s. But the BBC’s controversial and much anticipated Savile drama The Reckoning serves as a sort of historical Instagram, bringing vivid and intimate pictures from the kitchen and halls of the prime ministerial retreat.
With Steve Coogan’s cunningly unctuous Savile and Fenella Woolgar’s icily strategic Thatcher matching each other for full body-capture acting, these superb scenes in the third of the four hour-long episodes illustrate how the prime minister so fell for Savile that she placed a serial sex offender in charge of Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.
The Reckoning will air on BBC One at 9pm on 9 October; all episodes will be on BBC iPlayer.
