Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story’ On Netflix, A TV Star Who Abused His Power To Abuse Kids

This two-part true-crime docuseries comes with a trigger warning. But you’ll have to keep watching into the second part for this new Netflix series to pull the trigger on all of the monstrous abuses British DJ and TV star Jimmy Savile perpetrated on hundreds of young children without getting caught.

JIMMY SAVILE: A BRITISH HORROR STORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We’re first introduced to Jimmy Savile in an old TV clip, audience of older white people applauding him as he takes the stage, announcing the start of his hit series for the BBC, Jim’ll Fix It. A small child appears next to Savile, reading a letter in which he asks if Savile can fix it so he flies like Peter Pan, as a warning from Netflix appears in the upper-left corner that this program contains descriptions of child abuse. The footage is old and warped by time, and also by what we know now.
The Gist: Jimmy Savile was named Britain’s most popular radio DJ before making the transition to TV, hosting Top of the Pops in 1964, and then several more programs for the BBC, most notably Jim’ll Fix It from 1975 to 1994. The former show put Savile alongside legendary acts such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, while the latter turned him into a national hero, a regular Father Christmas character (and his long whitish-blond hairstyle certainly played into that).
He built his brand on his eccentricities, from his look and his jocular nature to the fact that he never had a girlfriend or a significant public relationship of any kind. He made a big show about volunteering at the hospital in Leeds, and later about fundraising for the spinal-injury medical center in Stoke Mandeville. All of that earned him attention and praise from the highest levels of government. Prince Charles sent him several letters in the 1980s asking for Saville’s advice on everything from where the royals should visit next to what Charles should put in his public speeches. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pushed for Savile to receive knighthood, which he got from Queen Elizabeth II in 1990. We also see plenty of footage of Saville with assorted royals and Thatcher, all of them fawning over him to see if his popularity could rub off on them.
Along the way, Savile did drop clues to a secret life. A favorite joke of his was saying he’d have his day in court “next Thursday.” While promoting his first book on a TV show, at least one panelist, the lone woman on the panel, presses Savile on not divulging enough of his real self in the book. To which Saville could only crack: “I’d probably finish up doing about 15 years in the nick if I did that.”
This docuseries tracks down some of the people who either worked with Savile or who had previously interviewed him, to see what they might offer in retrospect.

Savile died two days before his 85th birthday, and almost a year before the world found out about his decades of pedophilia and sexual assaults, with more than 450 allegations of abuse made against him. Instead, when he died, he received a lavish funeral broadcast on the BBC.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of?: There are sadly too many docuseries about famous and infamous criminals, even just on Netflix. Although the cases most similar to Savile’s are on, as they used to say, other networks. Most recently, We Need to Talk About Cosby on Showtime; also see Allen v. Farrow or Leaving Neverland on HBO Max.
Our Take: It feels more than a little gross to sit through 75 minutes of this docuseries reliving just how exalted Savile was in British society, and how exulted he felt about it knowing how many young Brits he was hurting along the way. And I’m not even one of his victims. Or even a victim at all!
If we want to learn from this, if this is a teachable moment for us, then perhaps we’d be much better off focusing on all of the enablers of these wicked men. Focus on how our culture, whether it be British, American or anywhere else in the world, on how we let rapists and pedophiles not only continue committing their crimes, but all-too-often revel in it. Why are too many of us willing to brush if off, particularly when it’s a celebrity? But also how do we fail each other when it’s coming from someone we  know.
Because as the Savile case demonstrated, that pedophile wrote the introduction to a book on “Stranger Danger,” knowing full well he’d never be seen as a stranger to any British child.
Sex and Skin: Mercifully none.
Parting Shot: As the first part of this two-parter all serves as set-up for Savile’s fall, we close on a montage of scenes meant to juxtapose what we saw and heard of him, versus the hidden truth. He appears on an episode of This Is Your Life, and footage of him dressed as Santa handing out presents to kids, while audio clips find him telling interviewers “I’m not constrained by pretty well anything,” and finally Savile in full denial when questioned by the police. “What was the real story?”
Our Call: It’s frustrating to know that Savile never got his comeuppance while he was alive. At the same time, even documenting his horrors posthumously can serve some honesty to his true legacy. STREAM IT if you’re not worried about being triggered by it. Otherwise, quite obviously, SKIP IT.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.