Don't know about you, but sometimes I can't sleep at night for wondering what it might be like if Gary Glitter were executed. I just can't picture it in quite enough detail for my liking. Would they fry him? Gas him? Or pull his screaming head off with some candy-coloured rope? I can never decide, and it often leaves me restless till sunrise. Thank God, then, for The Execution Of Gary Glitter (Mon, 9pm, Channel 4), which vividly envisions the trial and subsequent capital punishment of pop's most reviled sex offender so you don't have to.
I can't believe what I'm typing: this is a drama-documentary that imagines a world in which Britain has a) Reinstated the death penalty for murder and paedophilia, b) Changed the law so Britons can stand trial in this country for crimes committed abroad, and c) Chosen Gary Glitter as its first test case. It blends archive footage, talking-head interviews with Miranda Sawyer, Garry Bushell and Ann Widdecombe, and dramatised scenes in which Gary Glitter is led into an execution chamber and hanged by the neck until dead.
He's not just swinging from a rope, mind. The Glitterphile is all over this show, like Hitler in Downfall. There are lengthy scenes in which he argues with his lawyer, smirks in court, plays chess with the prison chaplain, weeps on the floor of his cell, etc. Visually, we're talking late-period Glitter, with the evil wizard shaved-head-and-elongated-white-goatee combo that makes him resemble a sick alternative Santa. It would be funnier if they showed him decked out in full 70s glam gear throughout, being led to the gallows in a big spangly costume with shoulder pads so huge they get stuck in the hole as he plunges through. I assumed the Glittercution would feature dry ice, disco lights, and a hundred party poppers going off as his neck cracked. But here there's not so much as a can of Silly String. This is a terribly serious programme.
Yes. It's illegal to laugh at this, see; it's not a comedy show, but "an intelligent and thought-provoking examination of the issue" which "confronts viewers with the possible consequences of capital punishment in the UK". There's going to be an online debate afterwards and everything, which should help clear up all our thoughts about the death penalty. Let's face it, none of us really knew where we stood until we were "confronted" by the sight of Gary Glitter staring wretchedly at an expectant noose. It really crystallised things, y'know? Before, I always thought of hanging as an abstract, faraway event existing only in ancient woodcuts or the minds of passing clouds. This makes it so much more real. My sincere thanks, Channel 4, for the searing moral clarity I've been granted. By the way, is the real Gary Glitter going to be taking part in that online debate thing afterwards? That'd be awesome.
What with this and the previous Killing Of George Bush drama-doc a few years ago, the Channel 4 family is establishing itself as the home of thought-provoking celebrity death fantasises. Now they've whacked a president and strangled a paedo, what next? How about a two-hour drama-documentary that wonders what Britain might look like if al-Qaida attacked the Baftas? Lots of detailed close-up slow-motion shots of bullets blasting through the ribcages of absolutely everyone off Coronation Street, that kind of thing. It'd really kick-start that debate about terrorism we're all gasping for. Perhaps it could solve it altogether.
Or what about a mini-series showing what'd happen if you kidnapped a bunch of newsreaders and X Factor contestants and kept them on a remote island and glued masks on their faces and fed them LSD and MDMA for two years until they started killing each other and rutting the corpses and shoving bits of blunt stick in their eye sockets and howling at the sun? That'd help society explore its relationship with authority, celebrity, identity, controlled substances, sex, violence and sticks. And God knows we need to. Help us, Channel 4. Guide us. You're our moral compass. You're our only hope.