The world really doesn’t need another Michael Jackson documentary. But the film-maker Jacques Peretti thinks we do. Or at least, Jacques Peretti thinks we need another one of his Michael Jackson documentaries. The Real Michael Jackson (BBC Two) is his fourth, which seems excessive, if not a little obsessive. It was commissioned by the BBC last year and was supposed to be a “reappraisal” of the King of Pop 10 years after his death. But then along came Leaving Neverland, Channel 4’s devastating account of child abuse allegations against Jackson, rendering this one irrelevant.

Leaving Neverland got a five-minute, begrudging mention here. Instead we had a retread of everything we know about Jackson’s life: a childhood sacrificed to the music business, driven by his tyrannical father, Joe; the superstardom that brought unhappiness, insecurity and plastic surgery; the relationships with young boys, the court cases, and the clever PR operation that convinced us that Jackson was an eccentric but harmless Peter Pan figure.

There was the occasional thoughtful contribution. Donny Osmond recalled an evening when he and Jackson, both child stars at the time, took a precious few hours out of their performing schedule to play with toys. Tommy Chong, a guitarist who knew the family, said of the young Jackson Five singer: “He was the smallest adult I had ever seen in my life. Even though he was the smallest, he ran that band.” And a commentator from the Village Voice, offering his take on Jackson’s changing appearance: “I really think that plastic surgery came from feeling like he had to make himself into somebody that white people wouldn’t hate on sight.”

But these were few and far between, and some were wasted – what was the point of getting an interview with Mathew Knowles, father of Beyoncé, but including only one line from him about music sales? Instead, we got Peretti’s self-indulgent noodling on his own feelings about Jackson, looking back on his past documentaries about Jackson, and viewing Jackson’s death through the prism of his own journalism. Of the moment he heard the star was dead: “I’m about to go to bed, it’s midnight… I get a phone call 30 seconds later saying, ‘You’re on a plane, you’re going to LA tomorrow morning.’” Why? A call from who? It wasn’t necessary to tell us.

“I regret I made three films about Michael Jackson, became part of the machine,” Peretti said at the end. But not enough to spare us this one.