Steve Coogan playing Jimmy Savile isn’t tasteless – it’s about real life

However triggering or controversial a subject might be, we as journalists need to cover it objectively, writes Charlotte Cripps

BBC drama ‘The Reckoning’, starring Steve Coogan as Savile, is to air later this year (Shutterstock)

We might all want to forget about Jimmy Savile – it’s sickening stuff. But this week, the disgraced presenter was the subject of a new two-part Netflix documentary, A British Horror Story.

It made my skin crawl; he was a part of the furniture in my childhood home. The cigar-smoking, white-haired presenter of Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It used to invoke feelings of nostalgia until his shocking crimes were revealed following his death in 2011.

The documentary comes ahead of the controversial BBC drama The Reckoning, starring Steve Coogan as Savile, which is to air later this year.