Netflix’s documentary about Jimmy Savile is coming soon
(Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)Netflix has dropped the trailer for its upcoming documentary on Jimmy Savile.
Titled Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, the show itself will arrive on the streaming platform on 6 April and from the trailer, it’s set to be a harrowing viewing experience.
The trailer begins by showing Savile at the height of his fame, attending football matches and being cheered by the crowd, meeting Prince Charles and being thanked for “every good cause” he supported by Margaret Thatcher.
“As a child, you just thought, ‘This guy can make things happen,’” a voiceover says.
“He knew everybody,” says another.
However, the trailer then takes a darker turn, hinting at Savile’s twisted personality and showing footage of him visiting children and disabled people in hospitals.
“With Jim, you accepted things as normal,” says a female interviewee. “But it was abnormal.”
The footage then cuts to an interview between Savile and a female TV show presenter.
“You do a terrific job, Jimmy,” she tells him, before he responds, “No, that’s all front. That’s all lies.”
“He knew fame and power gave him every door,” says one interviewee, before another tells the camera that “everywhere he’d been, there’d been abuse.”
“The nation created Jimmy Savile,” Andrew Neil tells the camera, amid shots of Savile being knighted by the Queen and receiving rapturous applause from crowds of fans.
The text accompanying it explains that it will examine, “through extensive archive footage, the evil within Jimmy and delves into how he managed to fool an entire nation for four decades.”
Jimmy Savile was one of the UK’s most beloved TV personalities during his lifetime, but after his death in 2011, an ITV investigation found more than 450 allegations of sexual assault and abuse, which led to a string of public inquiries.
The most famous of these was Operation Yewtree, which exposed him as a notorious child predator and found that Savile had used his involvement in the BBC, and at charities and hospitals, to prey on hundreds of people, mostly young women.
This isn’t the only upcoming show that will take a closer look at Savile’s crimes and his legacy: in September last year, Steve Coogan was cast as Savile for the BBC TV mini-series The Reckoning, which will tell the story of his rise and death.
Speaking about the casting, Coogan said it was “not a decision I took lightly.
“Neil McKay has written an intelligent script tackling sensitively an horrific story which - however harrowing - needs to be told,” he added.
Last year, presenter Louis Theroux was also forced to defend his 2000 Bafta-winning documentary When Louis Met Jimmy... in which he spent three months living with Savile.
Speaking to the Sunday Times Magazine, Theroux said the documentary was “very far from soft journalism” and added. “We all knew he was doing some act. He would more or less invite people to believe he had secrets.”
In 2016, he also filmed a follow-up documentary, Louis Theroux: Savile, in which he re-examined his relationship with the notorious public figure.
