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In what way, exactly, is Michael Jackson an “American tragedy”? Does the tragedy to which the title of this three-part BBC documentary refers concern the downfall of the most famous man on the planet into financial ruin, addiction and disgrace? Or does it belong to the children who alleged – and continue to allege – that Jackson sexually abused them? Is it about the bottomless need of a child star who craved the love of an abusive father so desperately he tried to fill the void with the adulation of millions of fans? Is it the sacrifice of a genius at the altar of the brutal music industry? Or is it an American tragedy about race?

As far as Michael Jackson: An American Tragedy is concerned, it’s all of the above, and then some. “The tragedy was that this man who got more attention than any human being was still so utterly lonely,” says Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Jackson’s former spiritual adviser. For childhood friend Michelle Breger, seeing Jackson whiten his skin in the late 1980s was “heartbreaking – Michael was trying to erase something off his face”. For prosecutor Ron Zonen, the tragedy is that the might of the Jackson machine won out over justice: “I felt it was remarkably obvious that he was molesting children.”

The point of the documentary, which airs in the run-up to the release of Michael, the family-approved biopic in which Jackson is played by his nephew, is not to break new ground. Nor – unlike the recent Channel 4 documentary Michael Jackson: The Trial – does it contain new material. Its aim is to contextualise the whole damn thing: the journey from child prodigy to global icon, the controversy, media circus and criminal trials, all of which continue to divide Jackson’s legacy, and, since his death in 2009, make his estate boundless amounts of money.

The danger of an all-encompassing approach is that the strokes can become too broad, and the moral compass lost. This documentary makes a valiant attempt at balance, but I’m not convinced the middle ground is what’s required when it comes to a story of such wild extremes.

The rise and fall arc is charted across three episodes: Fame – which gives Jackson’s musical genius its due – The Reckoning and The Resurrection. (The first is the only part of Jackson’s story that makes it into the forthcoming film, which apparently stops short of the first child abuse allegations in 1993.) Fame opens with the Jackson family’s humble beginnings in north-west Indiana: the home in which the boys slept in six bunk beds in one room, the sisters on a pull-out sofa in the sitting room. “He wasn’t as cruel as people think,” says La Toya Jackson of their father, Joe, with a weak smile, “but Michael had a fear of my father – we all did. Everyone would say I don’t want to get in trouble because Joe will strangle us.” Her smile widens, then slowly fades.

An overwhelming number of talking heads follow: family members, childhood friends, Dionne Warwick, producers, publicists, talent managers, record company executives, the Jackson family attorney, Jackson’s aesthetics doctor during his exile in Ireland, his former and final manager, Dieter Wiesner, and, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump. “I know him very well, and I don’t believe it,” he says after Jackson is booked on charges of molesting Gavin Arvizo in 2003.

Shana Mangatal, part of Jackson’s talent management team in the 1980s and 1990s, is fascinating on how after the first child abuse allegations, the company strategy was to “endear Michael to the black community”. A documentary on, yes, the American tragedy of how racial tensions were weaponised at the height of Jackson’s stardom, on institutionalised racism in the music industry and the pop star’s own complex relationship with race, has yet to be made, but the kernel of it is here.

The Reckoning opens with Jackson looking at photos of children and saying, “what has saved my life is children”. It closes with the fallout of the Martin Bashir documentary. “I felt absolute shock,” says Boteach of Jackson’s onscreen confession to sharing his bed with children. “Have you lost all touch with reality?” For Wiesner, it was the beginning of the end: “That documentary led to Michael Jackson’s death.”

The Resurrection deals with Jackson’s attempted comeback, death and the unprecedented repercussions of Leaving Neverland, which altered his reputation to such a degree that many, myself included, haven’t been able to listen to his music since. What’s most telling is how, even now, the focus stays on how the allegations have affected Jackson’s reputation, empire and legacy. The documentary concludes that what we’re currently witnessing, 17 years after his death, is “the most extraordinary effort to uncancel someone in history”.

The Resurrection ends, bizarrely but understandably given the magnitude of his god-complex, with an image of Jackson as a religious icon. “I really believe that children are God,” he says. “When I look in the eyes of a child it’s like God saying: ‘Michael, everything will be OK.’” The very last words – the epilogue text – are given to the alleged victims who claim Jackson abused them, seven of whom are now in litigation with his estate.

• Michael Jackson: An American Tragedy aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now.