What time Savile: Portrait of a Predator is on ITV tonight and what to expect

ITV is airing another documentary about paedophile Jimmy Savile. The channel’s last programme about the serial abuser helped bring justice for many victims.

This time Savile: Portrait of a Predator is set to look into how he got away with his crimes for so long.

Jimmy Savile was one of the biggest TV stars in the UK from the 60s to the 90s, known for TV shows such as Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It.

However, after his death aged 84 in October 2011, an ITV documentary Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile, revealed that he had used his involvement in organisations such as charities, hospitals, prisons and the BBC to abuse hundreds of vulnerable young girls and boys without being brought to justice.

The programme looked into decades of claims of sexual abuse against him and led to further allegations of abuse and a string of public inquiries.

It is now believed he preyed on hundreds of vulnerable victims as young as two years old.

The first recorded incidence of abuse occurred in Manchester in 1955, when he was the manager of a dance hall.

His abuse at Leeds General Infirmary, where he was a volunteer porter, and at Stoke Mandeville hospital, where he also volunteered, and at the BBC started in 1965, according to records.

Many of his victims reported the incidents, but they did not receive justice at the time. In 1990 he was knighted in the Queen’s BirthdayHounours, and also given a papal knighthood.

He was last interviewed under caution by Surrey police investigating an alleged indecent assault at Duncroft school in Surrey in 2009, two years before he died. But the CPS decided there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

In November 2011, after his death, the BBC’s Newsnight started to investigate the Surrey case and historic allegations, but it was axed, allegedly because it clashed with a tribute show.

In October 2012 ITV aired Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile, which outlines Savile’s crimes, and BBC director-general George Entwistle resigned in November the same year.

An investigation was launched into the BBC’s handling of Savile and a 2016 report found staff at the BBC missed numerous opportunities to stop him.

In October 2012 Operation Yewtree was launched, and it found that he has been “hiding in plain sight” due to his celebrity. It subsequently investigated a number of other TV personalities.

What is the show about?

Ten years after his death, a new documentary is asking how Savile got away with his crimes for so long.

It explores how Savile deliberately engineered his career and lifestyle to abuse and escape detection.

Savile’s decades-long career of abuse seriously affected the reputation of those who failed to stop him – most notably the BBC, hospital trusts and the police – once the truth emerged.

Seen through the eyes of those who worked alongside him and investigated him, this programme features new testimony from victims, while providing an insight into how he courted the Establishment as a way of protecting himself.

Is there going to be another programme about him?

Yes. He more recently been in the news because the BBC has announced a new drama about him, with Steve Coogan playing Savile.

The Reckoning will tell of the disgraced entertainer’s early working-class background, rise to becoming one of the biggest stars in television, and his prolific sex offending.

Alan Partridge star Coogan said: “To play Jimmy Savile was not a decision I took lightly. Neil McKay has written an intelligent script tackling sensitively a horrific story which, however harrowing, needs to be told.”

The BBC has not yet confirmed when the show will air.

When is it on?

Savile: Portrait of a Predator airs on Thursday 7 October from 9pm. It will also be available on ITV Hub.