WHAT’S HOT TO WATCH TODAY
EASILY the week’s most controversial documentary is LEAVING NEVERLAND: MICHAEL JACKSON AND ME, going out tonight and tomorrow on Channel 4 (9pm).
It’s the story of two guys, Jimmy Safechuck, 36, and Wade Robson, 41, who found themselves befriended by Jacko in the 80s, when they were just kids – and who now give a graphic account of the sexual abuse they say they suffered (still strenuously denied by the late singer’s estate).
The film features interviews with each, plus contributions from family members. Both guys’ mothers chip in with their own recollections. These are revealing in themselves.
However infatuated with Jacko their boys had been as kids, it sounds as if these mums were almost as starstruck. So when the chance came to actually hang out with this superstar (Wade’s Jacko impression won him a dance competition at the age of 5, Jimmy appeared with the singer in a Pepsi ad at the age of ten), they were happy to go along with it.
And at the time maybe that was understandable. Perhaps less so were the decisions each parent would make later, when the singer and their son were growing significantly closer. ELSEWHERE tonight, Richard Gere stars as a powerful media magnate in the new BBC2 drama MOTHERFATHERSON (9pm), with Helen McCrory as his posh estranged missus and Billy Howle as this screwed-up lad of theirs, way out of his depth running a national newspaper. STRAIGHT after that there’s the return of 80s-set comedy WHITE GOLD (10pm, BBC2), with Ed Westwick as dodgy double glazing salesman Vincent.