Steve Coogan refused to shoot the full horror of one of Jimmy Savile’s necrophilia crimes.
Steve Coogan refused to shoot the full horror of one of Jimmy Savile’s necrophilia crimes
The ‘Alan Partridge’ creator, 58, said the script for the BBC’s new show ‘The Reckoning’ about the serial sex attacker included a harrowing scene where Savile visits a hospital mortuary and lifts up a sheet to grope a dead body, but he got it changed after a conversation with the four-part show’s 63-year-old director Sandra Goldbacher.
Steve told a press conference about the scene, set in Leeds hospital: “There was a certain shot they wanted to do that I didn't want to do.
“It was just a detail that I was uncomfortable with, so I had a conversation with the director and we came to an agreement on what was the most appropriate way to depict it.”
He added about the scene: “It was really disturbing, what can you say? It’s as disturbing as it looks.”
Savile was exposed as a paedophile in 2012, roughly one year after his death, with his decades-long history of child sexual abuse coming to light.
The late ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ presenter, who died aged 84 without facing justice, visited Leeds hospital so regularly he had a bedroom there.
Steve’s disturbing scene in the facility sees Savile place his hand under a sheet covering a corpse of a woman in her seventies.
At the launch, the actor said the original plan was to feature a shot he “didn’t want to do”.
Steve added ‘The Reckoning’, which started on BBC One on 9 October, has been two years in the making due to “diligent forensic application about trying to make sure all the right decisions are made”.
He said “there’s no right or wrong answer” about addressing Savile’s crimes, but added he felt a responsibility to share his “opinion about what the right thing to do is”.
Steve added: “There’s a tension between showing too much of Savile’s offences, and it being grotesque, or sugar-coating them, which is also wrong (as we won’t) see the horror of what he did.
“So you have to strike that balance – you don’t want to upset survivors and you don’t want to anaesthetise the full effect.”
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