History Series / JimmySavileABritishHorrorStory

* DepravedKidsShowHost: One interviewee notes that the tabloids would have loved to have painted Savile as this, but stopped digging after [[ConfessToALesserCrime Savile claimed that he had a darker side he hid from the public]], feeling that there wasn't anything else to look for. The truth was much, ''much'' worse than they assumed.

* BrokenPedestal: For ''all of Britain'' - Savile was seen as a British Creator/FredRogers and was LovedByAll for his actions. When news of his real character came to light and were proven, the nation felt betrayed.

* {{Unperson}}: Due to his extensive charity work, Savile was recognized with plaques across Britain adorning everything from hospitals to Leeds city hall. The documentary explains how these were quickly removed after he was exposed. The Leeds funeral director describes the process in which he and the caretakers removed Savile's headstone. In one of the news clips, a woman calls for it to be removed because "[Savile] doesn't exist anymore."

* {{Unperson}}: Due to his extensive charity work, Savile was recognized with plaques across Britain adorning everything from hospitals to Leeds city hall. These were quickly removed after he was exposed. The Leeds funeral director describes the process in which he and the caretakers removed Savile's headstone. In one news clip, a woman calls for it to be removed because "[Savile] doesn't exist anymore."

* {{Unperson}}: Due to his extensive charity work, Savile was recognized with plaques across Britain adorning everything from hospitals to Leeds city hall. These were quickly removed after he was exposed.

!!''Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story'' is a documentary covering real events. This page exists to trope that documentary, not the events themselves.

* BerserkButton: Savile got annoyed whenever anyone implied that his visiting hospitals and raising funds was simply a gimmick or for his own benefit.

* WorkingClassHero: Savile was seen as a man of the people thanks to his background as a miner and his accent, and Prince Charles asked him for advice on how to relate to the working class. This made him an unofficial advisor to the Royal Family. Margaret Thatcher also saw him as a model for her vision of society, where people lifted themselves up solely through their own efforts and then helped the less fortunate themselves.

* RefugeInAudacity: Savile was able to get away with his crimes for so long by being openly leering, inappropriate and generally creepy but in a theoretically harmless way, acting more like an eccentric grandparent who tells raunchy jokes, and would often speak about his offenses in a manner that everyone assumed was simply self-depreciating humor as people assumed that if Savile actually was engaged in such acts, he'd likely try to distance himself from such rumors as much as possible. Added to this was his knowledge that anyone who did come forward would be dismissed right away due to his public image, allowing Savile the confidence to engage in his acts of abuse.

* PaedoHunt: The documentary is about how investigators slowly pieced together the truth that Savile was a sexual predator.

* {{Ephebophile}}: The earliest rumors about Savile were that "he likes little girls," with some believing that this meant he preferred ladies who were of legal age but definitely on the younger side compared to him as the age of consent in Britain is 16. Lynn Barber addressed this in her interview with Savile, and he explained it away by saying that the rumors came about because he had been surrounded by young girls his entire career as a DJ. He told her that the girls were there for the singers and bands that they liked, not for him. Of course, the truth was far more horrific than what anyone could have imagined.

* CondemnedByHistory: {{Invoked}}. In life, Savile was hailed by many as a bastion of British entertainment, receiving a funeral that was befitting that of a member of the royal family. In death, after being exposed as a prolific pedophile, Savile's memorials were removed, his shows pulled from the airwaves, and his name shunned and met with scorn. For good measure, the opening credits feature an animated depiction of his monumental headstone being destroyed.

* SpottingTheThread: Rumors of Savile's alleged double life stretched back decades, and whenever he was asked why he wasn't married or had a girlfriend, he stated that he was too busy working as a DJ and show host, as well as his charities to have a steady relationship, so he just went to local pubs and asked random women if they wanted to spend the night with England's most famous man. However, whenever the tabloids searched for anyone who had a one night stand with him, nothing came up, thus fueling the rumors of inappropriate behavior, but there was no concrete evidence of that either. However, Meirion Jones remembered that in [[TheSeventies the early seventies]], when he was a young boy, his aunt ran a reform school in Surrey for underage girls who had been charged with serious crimes but were too young for prison. Jones remember that whenever his parents took him to the reform school for a visit, he frequently saw Savile going in and out of there, and he even took out some young teenage inmates to town in his personal van for a few hours. Although Meirion's parents disapproved of a grown man hanging out with young girls unsupervised, his aunt said that Savile was a kind and charitable man who frequently gave the school money. This part of his life led Meirion to believe that Savile had ulterior motives beside donating money to a reform school, but he couldn't prove it until [[TurnOfTheMillennium the mid-2000s]], when the Internet allowed him to read posts from women who had been abused by Savile decades back when they were underage girls.

* WhamLine: At the end of Part 1, Meirion Jones says that reading Lynn Barber's interview with Savile was a key moment for him, as it was the first time that someone had mentioned the pedophile rumors and put it in print.
* WhamShot: Meirion Jones recounts a major breakthrough in his investigation. A woman named Karin said that Savile extorted sexual favors from her so that she and her friends could go to the BBC and be on one of his shows. The program was called ''Clunk Click'', and it aired during the period of the 70s when the BBC still routinely wiped their tapes. Jones and his team managed to find the surviving tapes for the program, and finally saw Karin on a "best of" episode, substantiating her story and showing that there had been abuse everywhere Savile went.

* BystanderSyndrome: One reason the pedophile unit at Scotland Yard was so understaffed was because many officers didn't want to deal with crimes involving children. Some felt it was "a woman's job" and others wanted to be on the Flying Squad and chase robbers.

* BlamingTheVictim: Right before the ''Exposure'' documentary came out, a number of people accused Savile's victims of trying to get money out of the accusations. Howard Silverman, one of Savile's friends, even said they were probably "groupies who threw themselves at him."
-->'''Howard Silverman:''' That sort of thing did happen in the pop business.

* CassandraTruth: Rumors and reports of Savile's pedophilia circulated for years before the truth came to light, but were ignored or dismissed out of hand.

* SerialRapist: It's estimated that Savile's victims number in the hundreds or even thousands, of which the police were only able to launch 400 lines of inquiry.

* RichesToRags: At the end of his life, Savile lived in a luxurious penthouse and wore gold jewelry. He had a funeral befitting royalty and received several special requests, like being buried at 45 degrees so that his coffin faced the sea. Once his crimes were exposed, his recently-completed ornate headstone was quietly removed and destroyed, leaving him in an unmarked grave like so many working class people from his era.

* NightmareFetishist: Martin Young recalls a dinner with Savile where he spoke about his time assisting EMT's on emergency calls and spoke about retrieving a severed head from a car accident as though it were just a funny workplace anecdote, leaving Young seriously uncomfortable.

-->--'''Jimmy Savile''' [edited], episode 1 voiceover

-->--'''Jimmy Savile''' [edited], episode 1

* NiceCharacterMeanActor: Savile's public image was of a philanthropist, beloved kids' show host and overall national treasure and friend to Britain. In reality, he was a depraved and prolific sexual predator.

* AristocratsAreEvil: Despite his working-class origin, Savile was able to work his way into the British Establishment through his friendship with UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher and his appeal to rebuild Stoke Mandeville. This granted him a great deal of protection that he wouldn't have had were he just another person on the street.

* ChurchgoingVillain: Savile was a ''deeply'' devoted Catholic to the point that his corpse was found with his fingers crossed. In interviews, he would say that he did all his charity work so that he could pull out the good deeds when St. Peter would judge his life against the bad deeds. One of his victims graphically and painfully describes how Savile would assault her ''in the middle of mass'' while she was waiting to go out with the collection plate.

Part 1 covers Savile's rise to fame, with sporadic references to the rumors into his private life. Part 2 features his final years while journalist Meirion Jones describes his investigation which ultimately exposed him.

-->--'''Jimmy Savile''' [edited], voiceover for opening credits, episode 1