I Came By official Netflix trailer with Hugh Bonneville There was a joyful sense of impending doom, comically delivered, in Douglas is Cancelled (ITV, Thursday). Well done ITV for bringing to the schedule a show that didn’t involve either hitting a ball or kicking one around a field. In this case, Douglas (Hugh Bonneville) was taking all the hits as he tried to save his reputation in the face of a snowballing crisis over an apparent sexist comment – or was it misogyny? Let’s not try to answer that one.
How refreshing in this heat was it to watch a drama which didn’t start with a rotting corpse? The only thing we were going to watch here was a character assassination, rightly, or wrongly. Oddly enough, we hear less and less about people being cancelled right now. It must be happening sotto voce in darkened rooms, with the word “cancelling” written on the door.
It would be a brilliant Monty Python sketch – “Is this the cancelling room, by chance? Will it hurt?” Will it, heck! Interestingly, and no criticism, Bonneville channelled a little of his WIA character Ian Fletcher as he wrestled with what seemed like his inevitable fate at the hands of social media. A national treasure playing a national treasure. It was clever casting.
This can only mean one thing: he is heading for a big fall. By the end of episode one, things were still just looking okay for him – his wife and daughter were still speaking with him notwithstanding “micro aggressions” although h.
