The BBC Hasn't Buried Jimmy Savile's True Crime Series 'The Reckoning' Yet

Steve Coogan takes on one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century in Britain.

Despite the backlash after it was announced that Coogan would be cast in the BBC drama series 'The Reckoning,' a true crime show about child predator Jimmy Savile, the network has confirmed the show will still air in 2023. "The Reckoning" was announced in 2020, with filming in 2021.

"We are currently in post-production for broadcast later this year," a BBC spokesperson said. "An exact date will be announced in due course."

A source previously said the network was suspending the series because there was a "fierce backlash" from Savile's victims. Savile was a "Top of the Pops" presenter. His decades-long pedophile practices related to his work with children and young people were discovered in 2012, a year after his death at 84.

The organization released a statement titled “Our Trauma is Not Your Entertainment” in November 2021, calling the upcoming series “deeply inappropriate and harmful.”

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“The revelation of the Jimmy Savile crimes in 2012 led to an influx of people who contacted our services for help,” the statement said. "It's something we don't take lightly, and we hope the BBC doesn't either."

'The Reckoning' is produced by ITV Studios for the BBC and follows the Netflix docuseries 'Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story'. According to Netflix's description, Savile was one of the UK's most beloved television personalities. Shortly after his death in 2011, an inquest sparked more than 450 horrific allegations of sexual assault and abuse, with victims as young as five years old. The documentary examines, through extensive archival footage, the evil within Jimmy and delves into how he managed to deceive an entire nation for four decades.

Netflix's true crime category came under fire in 2022 for dramatizing the reign of Jeffrey Dahmer's serial killer. "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" starred Evan Peters as the titular murderer; Peters won the Golden Globe Award for his role while families of Dahmer's victims criticized the show for having inaccurate and insensitive portrayals. “Monster” creator Ryan Murphy responded to the backlash by saying, “Something that we talked about a lot when making it was that we weren’t so interested in Jeffrey Dahmer, the person, but what made him the monster he has become. It really is a matter of white privilege. This is systemic racism. It's about homophobia."

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