Kim Shillinglaw, controller of BBC Two and BBC Four, said: “Louis Theroux is one of the country’s most talented filmmakers, and I am very pleased that he is revisiting this important-and deeply personal-subject for us, asking hard questions about the life of Jimmy Savile and those around him and exploring the impact his crimes had on his victims”.
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Louis Theroux is a fine documentary maker, but when tackling the weird world of Jimmy Savile he managed to completely miss the presenter’s deviant ways and “spectrum of sexual crimes”. This time, the BBC said, Theroux will speak to Savile’s friends, family and victims to discover how he was able to commit his crimes.
Theroux struck up a friendship with Savile- who was posthumously revealed to be a sex offender – after the interview, even staying over at his house on a number of occasions.
BBC Two’s Newsnight had also investigated allegations of sexual abuse by Savile, but the report was shelved, prompting an inquiry by former head of Sky News Nick Pollard in 2012.
When the Top Of The Pops presenter died in 2012 at the age of 84, the horrifying extent of his crimes finally came to light as numerous victims came forward. When Theroux asked if he meant he said that to stop tabloids pursuing the line that he might be a paedophile, Savile said: “How do they know whether I am or not?”
The report criticised the BBC’s management, but found no evidence of a cover-up.
Earlier this year, Theroux said that he felt “a sense of responsibility” for failing to get to the bottom of Savile’s predilection for children.
At the time of his death in October 2011, Savile was lauded for his fundraising efforts, having raised an estimated £40 million (US$61.5 million) for charities, though he was later revealed to be a predatory sex offender.
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Theroux added: “Everyone has a sexual dimension to their personality, and I knew that he wasn’t being totally upfront about what his was”.
