The Reckoning - BBC1 - Steve Coogan

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263389#Comment_121263389

I'm certainly no psychologist, but I do agree that he seemed to show many the big traits of what I understand psychopathy to be. However, I was referring to the series portrayal of him and hinting at a certain level of inner turmoil about his deviancy. Given that the disclaimer at the start of the programmes would say that the show was pieced together from various factual sources, but with other scenes added for dramatic colour, I'm wondering which category Savile's apparent guilty feeling fell under. In Plain Sight, by Dan Davies, which I haven't read, may go into more detail on this, given that it's his conversations with Savile that are depicted in the series, including Savile stringing him along about a confession, but also a mention of a promise he made to his dead mother, which I thought was interesting. It could, of course, all have just been more of Savile's games.

People have since been lining up to say they found Savile odd and creepy, but someone somewhere must have liked him at some point so that he could become such a big name in radio and TV in the first place.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264381#Comment_121264381

Maybe because they didn't have any sources to back it up but there was very little information about his early life. The dramatisation starts when he's about 30, driving a Rolls Royce and a much loved DJ. A DJ in a club in Leeds would not have been on big money, so where did he get the money for the Rolls Royce? He shared a flat with that guy (can't remember his name), was that for company, or was it to share the cost of renting or something else?

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264677#Comment_121264677

He wasn't just a DJ in a club in Leeds. He seemed to have been managing several dance halls (the Guardian has it as high as 52 venues at his peak) around the north of England at a time when you could be running them seven nights a week if you wanted to.

I haven't read any detailed biographies of Savile, but I have to think enough contemporaries and family members of his have been spoken to that a fairly detailed picture of his early life exists, but because The Reckoning is more about his crimes as an adult, it's not really something the programme went into.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264139#Comment_121264139

I was reading an account from a BBC cameraman that everyone on TOTP hated him, including all the floor staff and production team. He wasn't seen as some sort of loveable eccentric, just a weird and dislikeable creep - it's hard to imagine just what he would have had to done to get himself sacked by BBC management. He was an absolute fraud too - he didn't seem remotely interested in music (witness how in numerous press, TV and radio interviews, he only ever seemed to talk about himself....nothing about music or his favourite artists).

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121264975#Comment_121264975

I didn't know that. Having watched a docu-drama I shouldnt have to then go and read a biography of the subject of the programme to get all the relevant facts. From what you say, it still begs the question, how does a seemingly unlikeable individual with no real interest in music get to run 52 niteclubs?

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265093#Comment_121265093

The point I think needs to be made about Savile is that he was likeable to a lot of people, possessing an eccentric charm that probably would have seemed even more exotic at the time it came to prominence. The reason I think that point needs to be made is that predators like him often will open doors for themselves by ingratiating themselves to people. Something that Savile seemed to do very well.

But more to the point, and as the series depicts, he appeared to have no shortage of ambition or gumption, nor any hesitation in walking into a place, sticking his hand out and introducing himself, before doing his whole Savile thing, and I don't mean committing loads of sexual offences, although that did invariably follow.

Hyperbollix

For anyone wanting a deep dive on Savile, this loooooong documentary is the one to watch.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zCOix1iTvg&pp=ygUTc2VhbiBhdHR3b29kIHNhdmlsZQ%3D%3D