For some reason or another, TV and movie writers don’t quite get internet cancel culture right a lot of the time. The reason why people get cancelled, whether the cancellation is justified or not, usually is spawned by something specific that the person does or says that causes offense. While it may be an overreation, it doesn’t come out of nowhere. A new limited series written by Steven Moffat features a respected news anchor that faces being cancelled, but we were left scratching our heads over just what is causing the uproar.
Opening Shot: Two jovial news presenters are seen on screen, then in the studio, closing out the popular newscast Live At 6.
The Gist: Douglas Bellowes (Hugh Bonneville) and Madeline Crow (Karen Gillan) are the presenters of Live At 6, and they have terrific chemistry with each other, on screen and off. We see a couple of clues that it might be more than just a work friendship.
Toby (Ben Miles), the show’s producer, pulls Douglas aside and tells him that someone has tweeted out that he was overheard saying a “sexist joke” at a wedding over the past weekend. There’s nothing specific about the joke itself, except that it was sexist. Douglas doesn’t even remember what the joke was, as he had been drinking a bit that night. Toby thinks that this has the potential for blowback, making Douglas just worried enough to make him start spiralling.
When Madeline gets wind of the tweet, she furiously texts around trying to figure out what the joke was, to the point where she stays in the car with her phone and blows off her boyfriend Sebastian (Michael Parr).
Douglas just happens to be having dinner with his longtime agent Bently (Simon Russell Beale) that evening, and while they dicker over the difference between “sexist” and “misogynistic,” Toby calls Douglas with an emergency: Madeline just retweeted the negative tweet, adding a vague defense of her co-presenter, to her over 2 million followers.
Douglas’ wife, Sheila (Alex Kingston), the editor of a major newspaper, gets wind of Madeline’s retweet, and while she’s pissed at him about the idea of the joke getting out, she’s even more pissed at him that he seems obsessed with Madeline. She’s also bewildered by their 19-year-old activist daughter Claudia (Madeleine Power), which just adds to her stress.
Before bed that night, Douglas thinks he can convince Madeline to delete her Twitter account, but Sheila is still bewildered. “How does Madeline always get you back onside?” she asks Douglas, something she hasn’t been able to do in over 20 years of marriage. In the meantime, Toby brings in Morgan (Nick Mohammed), one of the show’s writers, to come up with a preemptive joke to “reveal” that toes the line of offensiveness but blunts the impact of the initial tweet.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Written by Steven Moffat, Douglas Is Cancelled combines the Moffat-esque witticisms from his previous shows like Doctor Who and Sherlock with the TV newsroom environment of The Morning Show or The Newsroom.
Our Take: One of the things that hampers the first episode of Douglas Is Cancelled is that the actual joke that seems to be getting Douglas in trouble is never specified. As much as the internet outrage mob likes to get a hold of something and tear the person associated with it to pieces, they usually latch onto something specific. Just hearing that someone made a “sexist joke” without knowing what the joke is might engender some mild consternation, but nothing that could potentially end a decades-long career like Douglas’.
We’re not sure why Moffat decided to go into this direction. It’s obviously a commentary on cancel culture run amok, but it would have been better if the line was out there and got wildly misinterpreted and analyzed. But the reactions to this tweet, even after Madeline retweeted it, seem outlandish even by Twitter/X standards.
The real story here lies in the relationships Douglas has with his wife Sheila and his “work wife” Madeline. How does Madeline feel about him, and how did it fuel the retweet that rocked London media circles?
Douglas Is Cancelled is certainly entertaining, with Moffat cranking up the comedy in most of the scenes, and a cast that’s familiar with the rhythms of his writing style. There are genuinely funny lines on the show, like when Sheila says that “we live in a world where a newsreader’s arse can push a war off the front page,” and says that Madeline’s tweet could be blown up into a headline with a blurry, drunken picture of Douglas next to one of her, with her “shiny hair” and “blowjob eyes.” In fact, Kingston has some of the funniest lines in the first episode, which, as fans of Kingston’s dating back to ER, was just fine with us.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: The next morning, Douglas charges into Madeline’s office to talk to her about her retweet. She says to “shut it,” and just as he starts to think she’s telling him to shut up, she specifies she was referring to the door.
Sleeper Star: Madeline Power’s character Claudia and Stephanie Hyam’s character Helen, who is Sheila’s personal assistant, are both written as over-sensitive Gen Zers. They both handle their roles well, but we sometimes get tired of writers our age or older making zoomers into people who can’t roll with the punches of life.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Toby is informed that the person he thought was Morgan was actually Tom (Joe Wilkinson), Douglas’ driver, he asks Tom, “How’s the wife?” “Dead,” Tom replies.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While Douglas Is Cancelled has a lot of story flaws, the dialogue is funny for the most part and is expertly delivered by Wilkinson, Gillan, Kingston and the rest of the cast, which might be enough to endure this non-controversy for four 40-minute episodes.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.