A Rolls-Royce, a red couch and a reputation buried

IF YOU GREW up, as I did, glued to Jim’ll Fix It, you wanted so badly to be any one of the incredibly lucky children on Jimmy Savile’s sofa.

Later you realised he was at the creepily weird end of the eccentric spectrum, but, still, in the run-up to the broadcast of Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile (UTV, Wednesday) the allegation that the ubiquitous celebrity was a predatory paedophile, using his fame to rape and abuse young girls, was shocking.

It was hard to listen to the stories of abuse told by the women now in their 50s and about how, as a predator, he put himself in the position of being around young girls. But it was stomach-churning to see his male contemporaries recalling Savile during the 1970s, with an attitude of “everyone knew he liked ’em young”, and that risible nondefence: “In those days you couldn’t tell whether a girl was 15, 16 or 18.”

The newspapers filleted this documentary for stories all week, so little of what his victims said was revelatory, but, intercut with archive footage of Savile’s programmes, in which he was surrounded by teenage girls or driving his Rolls-Royce – the symbol of his power and in which some of the abuse took place – it was grimly compelling.

Minor re-edits, on foot of the prebroadcast media coverage, included a statement from the BBC, in whose studios some of the abuse took place, regretting the events and offering co-operation with any investigation.

The re-edits also added that more women are coming forward to the programme’s presenter, Mark Williams-Thomas, a former forensic detective, to say they, too, were abused by Savile.

A visibly upset Esther Rantzen was the only celebrity interviewed, even though Savile was surrounded by famous people during his life. “It was the adult world who created this mythical figure, who was beyond blame. We in some way colluded with him as a child abuser.”

Questions remain about the timing of the news. In a BBC programme 10 years ago Louis Theroux asked Savile straight out about the allegations of paedophilia, so they were more than a vague rumour. Was his celebrity really enough to shield him for this long, to stop anyone investigating so that the story could emerge only after his death? The broadcast of this documentary buried Jimmy Savile’s reputation.

IT HAS Afanbase that's nearly as obsessive as Brody, its former prisoner-of-war protagonist, and it dominated this year's Emmys, so the first in the new series of Homeland (RTÉ Two, Tuesday) was a must-see. The inevitable recap of the first series was skilful and quick, although it was a shame the gut-twisting tension of the season finale didn't end when it logically should have, with Brody wearing a vest packed with explosives blowing everything sky high.

So now we know he’s gone over to the other side to work for his Muslim extremist captors, which means the “is he or isn’t he a terrorist?” cliffhanger that drove every moment of the first series is gone. It has been replaced with a “how far will he go to help the enemies of the US?”, which may not prove so tense.

The obsessive bipolar agent Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes), thrown out of the CIA at the end of the last series, is back in action, dragged in to retrieve intelligence from a contact in Beirut about an attack on the US. And we’re off, getting happily sidetracked in the multilayered subplots and the interplay between the mesmerising characters.

Danes’s motivation remains a mix of personal and patriotic. I’m wondering about Brody, though. Last series you could put him down as a classic Stockholm syndrome sufferer. Now it’s as if he has been brainwashed: all an operative had to do to make him take the first risk of the series was to mention Issa, the child of his captor killed by an American drone attack, and he clicked into terrorist mode.

All drama demands a suspension of disbelief, and, without delivering any more spoilers, because it starts on Channel 4 tomorrow – kudos to RTÉ for getting it first – there were more than a few moments in the first episode that were hard to believe. No matter, though: it’s still riveting, intelligent drama.

TV3 SOUGHT TObreak down stereotypes with the documentary Traveller Women: Telling It Straight (Monday), which featured a young mother enrolled at university, a teenager proud of having done her Leaving Cert, an older woman learning to read, and two sisters, talented singers hoping to make a musical career. With access to these articulate, smart and self-aware Traveller women, it could have delved much deeper into their lives; instead it stayed on the surface, not helped by an intrusive and jarring plummy-toned voiceover and a stilted script.

YOU THINK YOUhave a stressful job with difficult deadlines? Try being Jim McCarthy. In Anna Nolan's insightful and moving documentary Perfect Heart (RTÉ One, Sunday), we saw the Mater hospital surgeon stopping a man's heart, taking it out, holding it in his hands – leaving behind a gaping, surprisingly large, bloody hole – and then delicately stitching in a new heart.

If heart transplant operations aren’t completed within four hours, he said calmly, the outcome might not be so good. Which presumably is a nice way of saying the patient could die. Now that’s a deadline.

The man whose insides we now know – this documentary got up close and personal in so many ways – was John Healy, the flamboyant maitre d’ in the TV series The Restaurant. He blamed himself for not looking after his health. After two heart attacks he needed a transplant, and the camera followed him through the gruelling, mentally and physically challenging process.

He was a good subject for a documentary, being honest and willing to explore on screen his inner feelings about growing up, the abuse he suffered as a child and his difficulties in forming close relationships. He was well served by the film, which also included a moving interview (I nearly couldn’t watch it) with Martina Goggin, a Galway mother who some years ago agreed to donate her grievously injured son’s organs for transplant, as had been his wish.

Between her bravery and Healy’s new lease of life, if the film didn’t move viewers to sign that organ donor card, nothing will.

Get stuck into . . .

Sharp and fashionable as ever, Sonya Lennon and Brendan Courtney are back for a new series of Off the Rails (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 8.30pm).