Douglas Is Canceled: finally, a funny comedy Cancel Culture

Although I don’t know yet where Steven Moffat is delicious Douglas is canceled maybe it’s okay (I’ve seen two episodes out of four), I really like where it starts: not since the BBC satire W1A Was Hugh Bonneville just as perfect, inhabiting the male plonker form like a second skin (or, more likely, a suit clinging to Charles Tyrwhitt’s butt).

Bonneville has immaculate comic timing, his character’s most shameful feelings floating across his face like a rustle in a breeze. But that doesn’t mean the man he plays, a hapless TV presenter named Douglas Bellowes, deserves what’s coming. No. If he’s a lout, he’s also an ordinary man. O tempora, o mores! My response to poor Douglas is painfully indirect. All I can think is: Thank God this is happening to him, and not me.

Douglas welcomes Live at 6 o’clock – a current version of The only show – with her younger, smarter, sexier (oh, oh, can I say that?) sidekick, Madeline (Karen Gillan), and it’s huge. Everyone loves their duo, and it certainly seems more exciting to me than Holly and Phil or, uh, Eamonn and Ruth (RIP both couples). But trouble is headed his way like an Exocet missile. At a family wedding, Douglas got drunk and made a sexist joke, which a viewer later tweeted about (yes, I know it’s X now, but on the show everyone still calls him Twitter) . The guy in question didn’t have many followers: the whole thing could have disappeared. But the Machiavellian Madeline decided to retweet it, and she has a ready crowd of two million people.

Thanks to this, things are not looking good for dear Douglas, although so far no one really knows what was said (he doesn’t remember it either, because of the sauce) . His producer, Toby (Ben Miles, excellent), is panicked: “It’s like being Michael Caine in Zuluhe announces as the tweets pile up, before acknowledging that, yes, of course, he knows Caine was “basically the aggressor.” The same goes for Douglas’ ridiculous agent Bently (Simon Russell Beale, fabulous), and his sassy wife Sheila (Alex Kingston, having fun), who edits a tabloid and therefore knows all about the wrecking ball and how it swings out of nowhere to destroy a life.

The only person who is calm – like the water, just before a shark runs through it – is Claudia (Madeleine Power), the daughter of Douglas and Sheila, who represents all the young Puritans here. She’s part of a student think tank: “Is there a real think tank or do you just meet in a bar?” Douglas asks – it works on patriarchy, that sort of thing. She really doesn’t want to have to cancel on her father, even though she absolutely will if necessary (metaphorical blood is already running down her chin). Of course, she was at the wedding herself, watching her Uncle Donald marry his longtime partner. “Uncle Rapey,” she calls him. When Douglas points out that Donald is gay and has no feelings for young women, she accuses him of mansplaining. This heartless illogic is terribly plausible.

There is something to enjoy here: a wacky scenario well done, sometimes brutal but all the better; a multitude of polished and genuinely funny performances; convincing sets. None of this is very ITV. The real surprise, however, lies in Moffat’s refusal to err on the side of caution when it comes to youth. Television, like many cultural institutions, is under the influence of young people, a captivating fear that leads to some good decisions, but also some extremely bad ones. But Douglas is cancelled has other ideas and won’t flinch at the thought of making fun of pronoun users.

Some of the funniest scenes take place between Sheila and her hopeless AP snowflake, Helen (Stephanie Hyam). Helen tells Sheila that she neglected to mention Douglas’ crisis at first, having “internalized” it on the advice of “Sonia”. Who is Sonya? “She used to be called Anita, but she reinvented herself,” Helen replies. (Sonia/Anita works in HR, in case you hadn’t guessed.) What to do? Desperate for the internal to become external, Sheila can only promise Helen that for the next few moments, she will “break eye contact on request and will never maintain it for more than 30 seconds.” Like I said, it’s delicious – and I’m craving more.

Douglas is canceled
ITV1, 27 June, 9pm; available on catch-up