Jimmy Savile The Reckoning: BBC Drama needs to tell the full story

The most obvious example is Shakespeare's history plays - he filled the Globe Theatre with his versions of not just British but Roman history, and here's a historical spoiler... Macbeth was actually quite a good king who governed Scotland for than a decade (and chances are, the real-life one didn't talk to witches...).

So let's not be sniffy about them... but also let's not fall into the trap of thinking that the television director is performing the same role as the historian. Anyone settling down to watch The Reckoning should, for sure, hope to learn something about Jimmy Savile and his most heinous and abusive crimes. There is a clear case to be made to enlighten through drama, and to attempt to explain motivation and mentality of those involved.

But what must be remembered at all times is that this is a scripted performance that has had to edited into four hour-long chunks - it is not comprehensive, nor can it be, and nor can it possibly be 100 per cent accurate - after all, there are no records of the conversations between Margaret Thatcher and Savile. 

To return to Macbeth though, let's not forget motivation. Shakespeare changed the facts to fit the story he wanted to tell, but the reason he chose it in the first place can be explained by the fact that James I (James VI of Scotland) was newly on the throne. What better way to butter up a Scottish king who was fascinated by the supernatural than a play about his homeland, complete with witches and prophecies?

And let's look again at The Reckoning - a large plank of the issue with Jimmy Savile was that he was able to carry out his abuse because he was so involved with respectable organisations such as charities, hospitals, the Catholic Church and, yes, the BBC. It's not the BBC which committed the abuse, of course, but it's well known that a Newsnight investigation into the allegations was pulled in 2011, leading those making it to take it to ITV which screened it a year later.

So does The Reckoning pass judgement on this? No. And it even ducks the question.

As Mark Lawson has pointed out in the Guardian, given that the BBC has said that the Newsnight episode would warrant a “whole separate drama”, that drama should be commissioned, "so that there can be a reckoning for those involved in Savile’s latter era at the BBC, some of whom are still receiving pay and pensions from the licence payer".

But as Chris Harvey in the Telegraph writes: 'The BBC returns again and again to the Savile story almost as if it were compelled to relive a trauma... viewed in a different light, these revisitings... can be seen as the BBC trying to control the post-Savile narrative.'

And Christopher Stevens in the Mail goes further and thinks: "The Reckoning fails to reckon up the influence exerted on the entire country by the BBC's championing of Savile."

Now, media organisations are rivals and will have a pop at one another, that's true now and has always been the case. But while the acting in The Reckoning may be superb, while one can believe that it is important that these horrific stories are told - both as news and later as drama - one can still hold misgivings about the soft-soaping of history by one of the major players in it.

One of the most famous lines from Macbeth is spoken by one of the witches: "Something wicked this way comes." There's plenty of evidence that the BBC were aware of something wicked coming... it's also well-documented that not enough was done, and not quickly enough. Let them see their own Reckoning.