Did anyone see who Bill Cosby really was in the decades before he was finally convicted of sexual assault? If they did, were they willing to admit it? Such are the penetrating questions asked and answered by a new documentary, “We Need to Talk About Cosby.” National Review’s Kyle Smith explores that documentary:

In the 1980s, Bill Cosby was perhaps the most beloved man in America. And yet for two decades before that, and many years after, he was a sexual predator, according to dozens of women. Did he give us sly signals about what he was up to along the way?

We Need to Talk About Cosby, an outstanding four-hour documentary that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival last month and is now airing in four parts on Showtime, concludes that he did. Filmmaker and comedian W. Kamau Bell has assembled a chilling indictment of Cosby’s horrific acts that nevertheless fully acknowledges Cosby’s gigantic talent, the scope of his contributions to society, and his outsized cultural footprint. Bell is himself black, and that matters. I’m not sure a white filmmaker would have dared broach some of the topics Bell and his cast of commentators and witnesses discuss toward the end of the film.

Cosby was a groundbreaking talent in Hollywood, becoming what Smith calls “one of the first black standup comics to break through in the white mainstream.”

But already, in the ‘60s, according to the women who would be too ashamed to tell their stories publicly until half a century later, Cosby was giving women drugs — probably quaaludes, which were legal before 1982 — that would knock them out and leave them with memory gaps. Several of his victims appear in Bell’s film telling us about how they awoke to find themselves naked and raped, but they consistently blamed themselves. One of the most disquieting stories is told by Victoria Valentino, a model whose six-year-old son had recently drowned, when she says Cosby drugged and raped her. “I just thought it was me,” was a typical reaction. Women would leave his hotel room apologizing for having passed out. These stories remain agonizing to listen to all these years later, but Bell provides the women with the necessary time to complete the picture of Cosby’s depravity.

Yet Bell is careful also to emphasize Cosby’s admirable qualities, such as his push for racial progress. When his career began, white stuntmen in blackface substituted for black actors; Cosby insisted on bringing in a black man to double him. That man, Calvin Brown, shares his memories in the doc. Later, Cosby would insist on hiring black craftsmen on his TV shows.

Perhaps it was this advocacy for desirable things that led people to look away. Americans liked Bill Cosby too much to see the signs:

As a standup, Cosby was one of the greatest in his field — his 1983 HBO special Himself is still revered by many comics — and Jerry Seinfeld, among others, closely imitated his tactic of placing everyday life under a microscope, which became the standard approach. Yet even back in the Sixties, Cosby’s routines — which were noted for being family-friendly! — exhibited a fascination with “Spanish fly,” the aphrodisiac drug of legend that was reputed to put ladies in the mood (actually it’s more of an irritant). “You gotta slip it to her when she thinks she’s drinking something else. A coupla drops in her Dr Pepper,” Cosby wrote in his 1991 book Childhood, and he said nearly the same thing on a CNN appearance with Larry King that year. Bell also spotlights a scene from The Cosby Show in the Eighties in which Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable brags about the aphrodisiac properties of his barbecue sauce, some of which he informs his wife he has placed on their bedside table.

Colleagues of Cosby from that pathbreaking sitcom — which, though anodyne, provided black Americans with an aspirational family of the kind that had never been seen on television — reflect on how almost no one ever saw his wife, Camille, on the set, and recall the steady stream of models who waited outside his dressing room. Everyone shrugged.

Race was certainly a factor in the blind eye, and not without reason. The documentary delves into how blacks denied allegations because they thought it was really a conspiracy to take down a black hero. Of course, protecting one’s own at all costs certainly isn’t unique to the black community. Other predators of other races have continued their crimes for too long because too many protectors attacked accusers instead.

The sad truth, Smith concludes, is this:

Freed last summer after serving only two years in prison, he has nearly escaped punishment for his acts. He should have spent most of his adult life in prison.

“People say the worst thing about Cosby is that he was a hypocrite,” deadpanned the late Norm Macdonald in a clip included in Bell’s film. “I don’t think that was the worst thing about him.”

National Review subscribers can read the whole thing here.