Michael Jackson used to insist, \u201cI\u2019m bad!\u201d \u2014 until his pleas turned instead to, \u201cI\u2019m innocent!\u201d His fixation on children was a pure and loving thing, he said. Or, as we heard him lamenting to his rabbi in recordings aired in Michael Jackson: The Trial (Channel 4), \u201cChildren \u2026 just wanna touch me and hug me. Kids end up falling in love with my personality; sometimes it gets me into trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which is putting it lightly. The trouble won\u2019t go away for as long as we\u2019re still talking about Michael Jackson. Yet somehow, despite all the allegations, the 2005 court case, the overwhelmingly damning Leaving Neverland documentaries, he\u2019s still pretty much the King of Pop. <\/p>\n
His music is all over the radio, last week Kemi Badenoch was fondly choosing Don\u2019t Stop \u2019Til You Get Enough on Desert Island Discs, while in her new film, Melania, Mrs Trump says Jacko is her favourite artist. Coming soon is a big movie biopic celebrating his genius. All reason enough, perhaps, for another documentary raking over the lurid old ground of the singer\u2019s infamous 2005 trial for child molestation. <\/p>\n
Yes, we\u2019re here again, and this four-parter moonwalks us right back into the eye of the media frenzy around Jackson, which erupted after his interview with Martin Bashir in 2003. That was when the singer admitted that he shared the same bed as young boys while a 13-year-old named Gavin Arvizo rested his head adoringly on Jackson\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n
The series aims to peer a bit deeper, or wider, at the notions of tainted fame and the way a media circus seemed to feed the justice system. More than that, to my eye, it is unusually balanced regarding Jackson\u2019s assumed guilt, presenting a kind of push-pull between certainty and uncertainty, even if most viewers will have made up their minds. <\/p>\n
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the singer\u2019s \u201cspiritual guide\u201d from 1999-2001 and someone sympathetic to Jackson, played us excerpts of their soul-searching chats to show how deeply broken the icon was by his father and to help to explain why there were two sides to the singer. \u201cOne needed love and validation, the other needed attention and celebrity.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2022 Michael Jackson \u2014 can Hollywood save the world\u2019s most divisive pop star?<\/a><\/p>\n A clip from the inside of Jackson\u2019s limo of faces glued to the windows was remarkable for giving a sense of just how rabid his fans were (are!), their blind devotion bordering on religious mania. <\/p>\n New interviews switched from Jackson\u2019s inner-circle videographer saying, \u201cI never saw a sexual side\u2026 I saw an asexual man who wanted to be 12 years old and have water balloon fights,\u201d to a suspicious Arvizo family friend who didn\u2019t know Jackson. \u201cJackson built an amusement park in the middle of nowhere. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the behaviour of someone who\u2019s not attracted, sexually, to children,\u201d made her sound a bit as if she had a pitchfork hidden under her chair.<\/p>\n If the sensationalist media hunted Jackson across news cycles like some modern-day Frankenstein\u2019s monster, as is the impression from this series, the singer of course had only himself to blame. And it\u2019s when you arrive at the footage in episode two of Arvizo\u2019s interview in 2003 \u2014 where we see the teenager describe in detail Jackson\u2019s sexual abuse of him \u2014 that one\u2019s response inevitably enters more revulsed territory.<\/p>\n \u2022 Read more TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n That\u2019s before we get to a former Jackson PR\u2019s recalling his discovery of a \u201cnaturist magazine\u201d among the singer\u2019s belongings, its adverts for videos of \u201cnaked kids\u201d allegedly marked for order.<\/p>\n What a swamp of dysfunction, accusations and rebuttals. The series inevitably has a whiff of picking at scabs, yet that\u2019s the thing with Jackson \u2014 it\u2019s hard to stop watching even as you start to feel the need for a shower. Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a>, the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a>, the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to watch<\/a> and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Jackson used to insist, \u201cI\u2019m bad!\u201d \u2014 until his pleas turned instead to, \u201cI\u2019m innocent!\u201d His fixation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-281994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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On Channel 4 streaming<\/p>\n