Michael Jackson: Leaving Neverland

The difference being with Jackson that when alive, he had a huge amount of money with which to fight any case which was brought. I followed the Gavin Arvizo court case closely at the time and there was a lot of evidence to suggest something had happened.

For instance, Arvizo claimed that Jackson had exposed him to pornography. His and Jackson's fingerprints were then found on pornographic magazines, but the defence said he had found them lying around and read them without Jackson's permission. They then used this piece of prosecution evidence to build a narrative that Arvizo was unruly. Jackson "didn't ply him with alcohol (as accused), Arvizo stole it from the fridge and then threw the empty bottles at people from the top of the Neverland ferris wheel".

The defence's strategy was to do as much as possible to discredit Arvizo and his family. I'm not sure that's the strongest case to be making if it's clear you are innocent.

While the sexual acts described in the documentary were obviously disputable, a lot of the other stuff discussed is absolutely true. He did tend to have a 'favourite boy' that he would spend a lot of time with, taking him on tour, holding hands in public etc, and that boy would change from time to time. The amount of press photography and video from that era proves that to be the case. The fact that many are shrugging that off because "he didn't have a childhood of his own", to me shows just how well Jackson didn't just groom the children and families, but also fans around the world.

I understand the desire to get justice while someone is still alive but often that is incredibly difficult when fighting what is essentially a huge corporation with the clout of Jackson. Sometimes trial by television is the closest you will get.

The testimony was quite compelling, but we only heard the stories from the point of view of the children and their families. Not that they have any reason to lie, but it would be nice to hear from those involved on MJs side - his assistants and staff, surely one is willing to speak up about what happened. Presumably they either can't or won't speak about it.

Despite that it was fascinating TV


There are similarities with Jimmy Saville but the main difference is that with Saville it was based around vague rumours, whereas Jacksons were more detailed and did actually lead to a court case. Whether Jackson knew what he was doing was wrong, well it sounds like he did as according to one of the interviewees he had emergency plans for when someone came in on them.


Coming back to telly, I couldn't help thinking how different things are these days and how good the concept of 'safeguarding' is these days

Dan Reed's line is that it is a film about the boys' story, more than a film about Jackson in general. That said, I'm intrigued to see what's left in the second part.

That makes sense I suppose, but it does leave me wondering about the other side of the story. There's no justification for what happened of course, but there will have been mistakes and blame on both sides.


Yes, I hadn't realised that the second half is 2 hours long... how they going to fill that?

EDIT - just watching the rest of the 1st part and hadn't realised that was 1 hour 50!

I imagine radio will quietly drop his songs from rotation, rather than publicly stating that they're banning his work.

You can keep track of whether Radio 2 has played him here: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from%3Abbcr2musicbot%20michael%20jackson

Have to say I haven't really heard his music on the radio much in the last 12 months. I think I heard 'Man in the Mirror' once. So it's not going to be a massive change to me, though it obviously depends what kind of radio stations you like to listen to.

I think the most obvious indicator of whether he's fallen out of public favour will be if he ceases to appear on stuff like the TOTP repeats, music channels and other music shows etc.

I think it'll be impossible to remove him from the public consciousness though. Remember he has a family of brothers and sisters who are also famous.

Must admit I'm not a fan of this "pretend he never existed" attitude either though understand the logic behind pulling specific MJ content. It's when they start removing just passing references in other shows or background music and essentially killing the creation of someone else by editing it out (or blocking it from being shown entirely) that it crosses the line.


And may not be the right place here as I think this documentary is a different class but it does worry me how the "real crime" genre is getting more and more mixed with entertainment now. Digital Spy (yep, those last bastions of journalism) have been treated Stephen Avery like a soap character for the best part of a year now. Similarly with Ted Bundy in recent weeks.

We'll probably notice come Halloween whether or not Thriller gets a look in.

Talking of which, I wonder how long Thriller Live will last. It's currently one of the longest running shows in the West End.

I'd say Netflix are almost 100% to blame for this phenomenon.

I don't understand what has changed since the Martin Bashir documentary.

Surely everyone is aware of what he was up to by now? I don't get why they'd suddenly drop his music after all this time?!

There's no doubt he was up to no good - (sleeping with kids alone and paying kids to keep quiet) but we're not really any further forward unless a shocking video or audio clip of these events are unearthed?

These guys could come up with anything and there wouldn't be anyone who could argue against them. That's the issue I have with this documentary.

Given that June this year will mark 10 years since his death, it could have been quite a big year in terms of his music being played.

There may have been anniversary programmes/tributes planned, or even in production.

I think the timing of this documentary is no coincidence.

Blimey. I’d have said 6 to 7 years max. It’s true what they say, the closer you get to the plughole, the faster time goes. Take heed young people!

Well, I don't know about you, but for me the second part was just as important, describing the effect it had on both victims into adulthood and the effect on both of their families after they told them the truth.