The Cancellation of Jim Davidson, Channel 5, review: a surprisingly fair audience

Watching The cancellation of Jim Davidson (Channel 5), you may be wondering: Was Jim Davidson really canceled? His 2023 stand-up tour was called Not Yet Canceled. He won Celebrity Big Brother in 2014, despite its many controversies. And there he is, interviewed as part of a career retrospective full of people who think he’s awesome and aren’t afraid to say so.

It’s true that he’s no longer the BBC’s Mr Saturday Night. At one point he was earning £1.5 million a year as host of Big Break and The Generation Game. The BBC dropped him in 2002, but that was years before cancel culture, and even his manager admitted he had a good run. The television continues.

So it was best to ignore the title of the program (changed at the last minute from the working title of The Rise and Fall of Mr Saturday Night, probably because it attracts more attention) and enjoy it as it was. ‘an impartial look at Davidson’s career – even if he sometimes seemed embarrassed by his own subject. Before showing a clip of Davidson as Chalky, his stereotypical West Indian character, narrator Michelle Collins felt the need to explain: “Now, this sort of thing is not my cup of tea. But it was a major moment in Jim’s life and you can’t really tell his story without it.

Davidson’s story was described from the beginning: “He was the likely boy who started with nothing, won everything, lost everything, won back most of it, befriending people in very high places, before lawyers, debt collectors and even the police came knocking on our door. And that’s before we get to the five wives.