Culture | TV Douglas Bellowes ( Hugh Bonneville ) is a presenter on a successful evening news programme called Live At Six. Despite a familiar kind of entitled stuffiness, he and his sparky young co-host Madeline Crow have a chemistry that makes for TV gold. All is fine in the world of Douglas – at least as far as he’s concerned – until it isn’t.
A tweet emerges that suggests he was overheard making a sexist joke at a recent wedding, and a damn good cancelling is seemingly about to unfold. Especially when Madeline chooses to retweet it to her 2 million followers. Stephen Moffat is the man behind Douglas Is Cancelled, and has actually taken a bit of a risk with the show.
Such is the fevered state of social media ‘discourse’ that doing a show dealing with cancel culture is itself running the risk of being cancelled. Especially a comedy. Especially a satirical comedy.
How can you skewer the trigger-happy puritans policing behaviour like Orwell’s Junior Spies, without feeling their joyless wrath? Or how can you prick the denial bubbles of willfully ignorant Anti-Wokies without feeling their blustering ‘right to hate’ rage? Well, Moffat finds the solution in taking witty swipes at everyone and everything in our peculiarly deluded age, which makes for a highly refreshing hoot. Hugh Bonneville reaches peak Hugh Bonneville here, hilarious as a hapless anchor suddenly out of his depth in a raging social sea, flapping about in incredulous alarm while having his ego sp.