Episode Details

Michael Jackson was performing professionally at five years old and never had a childhood. By the time he became the biggest pop star in history, the damage was already done. Thriller sold 70 million copies, but the boy inside the man was still looking for the childhood that had been taken from him.

This episode traces Jackson from the Jackson 5 and his father's brutal discipline through the making of Thriller, his physical transformation, his increasingly isolated existence at Neverland, and the prescription drug dependency that killed him at fifty.

• Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time with over 70 million copies sold
• He popularized the moonwalk during a 1983 television performance that stopped the country
• He spent years building Neverland Ranch as the childhood amusement park he never had
• His death in 2009 from a propofol overdose administered by his personal physician shocked the world