Geopolitical strife, climate disaster, artificial intelligence turning humans into useless flesh lumps. There’s a lot to be worried about at the moment. But, for a certain class of person, there’s one thing that creates more dread than anything else: cancel culture.
That’s the jumping-off point for Steven Moffat’s new ITV drama, Douglas is Cancelled , which looks at the fallout from a dangerous rumour. Hugh Bonneville is Douglas Bellowes, an avuncular, Eamonn Holmes-type TV presenter . His sofa-wife is Madeline Crow (Karen Gillan), an ambitious younger journalist, and, in the words of Douglas’s hack wife Sheila (Alex Kingston), “God’s gift to the photo desk”.
Their tight relationship is put under increasing stress when an accusation circulates on Twitter/X that Douglas was heard making a sexist joke while drunk at a wedding. What was the joke? Or, more importantly, who was the punchline? As Douglas, his sleazy producer Toby (Ben Miles) and idiotic agent Bentley (Simon Russell Beale) scramble to control the narrative, dark secrets emerge about life on Live at 6 . This is, in many ways, a show of two halves: Douglas’s half and Madeline’s half.
The former deals with the almost disposable threat of cancellation ( whatever that might mean ), while the latter deals with the much more real residue of trauma. “Whatever shit you have to wade through,” Douglas tells Madeline on their first meeting, “it really is worth it.” But is it? That’s the question Do.
