Steven Moffat is best known as the creator of the BBC’s Sherlock, so it’s apt his new comedy Douglas Is Cancelled (UTV, Thursday, 9pm) should hinge upon a huge, imponderable mystery. How could anyone involved in this limp satire have possibly concluded they were doing justice to the complex issue of cancel culture?
It’s not that the topic isn’t ripe for skewering. We’ve all seen social media select a random victim and rip them to shreds. The problems with Douglas is Cancelled are two-fold: its bumbling execution and the enthusiasm with which it caricatures anyone who dares to be “woke”.
“Douglas” is daytime television presenter Douglas Bellowes (Hugh Bonneville) – one of those cuddly, national treasure types UK television excels at churning out. He’s widely beloved and has a chortling chemistry with his co-host Madeline (Karen Gillan). But when someone complains on social media about a “sexist joke” he made at a wedding, everything unravels for the affable anchor (portrayed with a cheery twinkle by the always reliable Bonneville).
People squirm in his company. His agent explains that everything will work out fine – as soon as Douglas takes the fall for his gag (which he claims he cannot remember). Meanwhile, his wife Sheila (Alex Kingston) – an editor at a London newspaper that shines at destroying celebrities – warns the wholesome Madeline may not be as loyal as he thinks.
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Douglas Is Cancelled aims for a tone somewhere between the midnight black zing of Succession (the jazzy theme tune riffs on that of the HBO series) and the cringe-factor-10 sensibility of Armando Iannucci’s The Thick Of It. But Moffat has never been associated with comedy, and his swing at wry, quick-fire banter lands dead on arrival.
Another issue is that the script does not know how to deal with female characters. They are all reduced to ciphers. That includes Gillan as a Holly Willoughby-Meets-Susanna Reid mash-up Madeline and Douglas’s activist student daughter Claudia (Madeline Power), whom we are invited to laugh at because she believes society is controlled by the patriarchy.
British TV has had no lack of scandal in the past several years. There are echoes in Douglas Is Cancelled of the downfall of Phillip Schofield and Huw Edwards. However, the behaviour of which they were accused was far more serious than the charges levelled at Douglas, and Moffat never comes within yelling distance of plausibility. If Douglas Is Cancelled has lots to say, it has neglected an ingredient crucial to any satire: a functioning sense of humour.
