Bill Cosby was a fatherly presence in the lives of millions of Americans in the 1980s. He also had a profile in Ireland, where The Cosby Show was a Sunday-evening ritual: one final weekend chuckle before Glenroe brought the misery.
But that persona was a lie. Cosby was convicted in 2018 of drugging and abusing women before being freed on a technicality in 2021. The number of allegations against him is shocking – more than 60 women have come forward – although many of the crimes of which he is accused lie beyond the statute of limitations. The story of how he was unmasked as a serial predator after a lifetime of lies and manipulation is told in excruciating detail in We Need to Talk About Cosby (BBC Two, Sunday, 9pm), a four-part documentary by the comedian Walter Kamau Bell.
It’s a sprawling tale, and Bell is in no hurry to reach the punchline. He takes the right approach in giving the victims space in which to recount Cosby’s crimes. Less successful is his attempt to place Cosby’s story in the context of the United States’ racial struggles. Cosby was, much like OJ Simpson, a mould-breaker. As one of the most beloved comedians in the US, he was a black man operating in a white space. He was a role model, in particular, to black comedians. As Bell says, “I am a child of Bill Cosby.”
The problem is that the first episode of We Need to Talk About Cosby gets bogged down in the minutiae of Cosby’s rise. The instalment plays out almost as an uncritical biopic as we trace his journey from I Spy, in the 1960s, to The Cosby Show (in which, mind-bogglingly, this sexual predator played a gynaecologist with a basement office – talk about showing people who you are).
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There are parallels with Jimmy Savile, in that Cosby’s predations appeared to have been an open secret in the industry. It’s just that nobody seems to have done anything.
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“I don’t believe the people on that set didn’t know what was happening. A lot of people knew. You can’t do what he did unless you have other people supporting what you’re doing,” says Eden Tirl, a model whom Cosby cast in The Cosby Show. (She smelled trouble and made sure she was never alone with him.)
Cosby’s gaslighting and manipulation are covered more extensively in later instalments. Alas, the sheer accumulation of detail in part one makes it a slog for the average viewer.
