Douglas Is Cancelled - a review

One of the best aspects of television’s 21st century golden age has been the three or four-part drama. Working to the same dynamic as a classical stage play, and available to watch all in one go online or as TV appointment viewing, it allows producers and directors to craft compelling viewing, adverts or not.

Sometimes the drama can be so intense that the ads come as a welcome intermission of light relief. In recent years Jimmy McGovern’s Sean Bean prison drama Time and ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which actually changed law, have attracted millions of viewers on various platforms, creating shared socio-cultural moments. And what could be more of a shared cultural moment than the contemporary phenomenon of cancellation?

While it may be said that democracy is never wrong, it is also true that the general public fall to the first-level thinking of instant moralisation very easily, and newspaper editors have been aware of this forever. So when faces trusted by millions due to regular exposure for years fall off the wire for some reason, there is a mixture of schadenfreude and sympathy, as the famous face becomes nothing more than media moral-fodder.

Increasingly this falling off the wire involves not keeping up with a cultural ecosystem governed by social media platforms such as Twitter/X, as racial, gender and ‘viewpoint’ attitudes turn on whichever narrative is in charge at that moment. Douglas Bellowes could easily be a Huw Edwards or Philip Schofield-type figure, such is the benevolent, gentle everyman of Hugh ‘Paddington’ Bonneville’s performance.

The ‘sexist’ joke he told at a wedding party was kept cunningly secret for some time, before its relevance to younger Scottish co-host Karen Gillan was revealed, setting off a social media contagion now so familiar to public life. Increasingly public figures are seen as a bit uninteresting if they haven’t had some degree of cancellation befall them, and Bellowes’ conversations with his crusty agent, bathetically played by Simon Russell-Beale, shows this changing climate well.

Other dynamics play out skilfully over the four episodes, with the show having more than its fair shares of young comedy turns, from woke interns to clumsy comedy writers. Episode 3 is largely an exploration of MeToo-era casting couch culture, with Ben Miles’ producer character showing off a very different side to his repertoire; while the tense-fly-on-an-icky-wall contains an ominous change of tone. This tone shows the ‘progressive female’ aspect gaze of the series, shorn of the old-school banter that might have accompanied a previous era’s James Bondification of the encounter. Even this gnarlier part has what could be seen as a comedy denouement, later on.

The play-within-a-play finale is super-intense in Episode 4, as all the ensemble characters gather inside or outside a practice interview, ostensibly for Douglas to clear his name, Prince Andrew-style. Did Douglas tell sexist jokes because his wife wasn’t giving him enough sex? Who is the real ‘monster’ of the piece? Is it acceptable to idol-worship to the point of stalking, even if that makes you more popular than the idol? What about the unique love between a father and his daughter? All very now, all very well-handled, and presented to the viewing millions at a multitude of times, via a plethora of screens.

Good to see a mainstream TV production not pretend that cancellations don’t happen, as is often claimed in ‘progressive’ media circles. But Douglas Is Cancelled has at its heart a powerful question: in the future will the only compelling entertainment be that made by the cancelled?

A Delicate Balance Of Reason - Adventures In The Culture Wars available here: https://push.fm/fl/https-www-amazon-co-uk-dp-b0d1p5wqgl