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Posted in: Review, streaming, TV | Tagged: Douglas is Cancelled, steven moffat
Douglas is Cancelled: Steven Moffat's Cancel Culture Satire Stings
Douglas is Cancelled is Steven Moffat's darkly satirical take on #MeToo and Cancel Culture, with twists, jokes, and suspense in equal doses.
Article Summary
- Steven Moffat's Douglas is Cancelled satirizes cancel culture with wit and suspense.
- Hugh Bonneville stars as Douglas Bellowes, whose career spirals after a joke goes wrong.
- Moffat blends comedy and drama, keeping the audience guessing through plot twists.
- Stream Douglas is Cancelled on Britbox for a stinging take on today's media landscape.
Not that anyone was asking him for one, but Douglas is Cancelled is Steven Moffat's take on Cancel Culture and #MeToo that he insists only coincidentally contains parallels with real-life events that were going on in the British media industry when the miniseries first premiered on ITV in the UK last year. This being a Steven Moffat show, of course, it's a satire, sort of a comedy-thriller, only nobody gets murdered for a change. Well, their reputation and careers get murdered.
Douglas is Cancelled happens when Douglas Bellowes (Hugh Bonneville), a beloved news anchor, is overheard making an off-colour joke at a wedding reception that gets spread on social media. His co-anchor Madeline Crow (Karen Gillen) shares the post, and it goes viral. Trouble is, nobody knows exactly what he said, but just being reported to have said it is enough to get him in hot water with the general public. Douglas gets very British and befuddled, insisting what he said wasn't that bad. The problem is, what did he say exactly? As his life and career go into freefall, his wife Sheila (Alex Kingston) starts to suspect Madeline might be out to take over his job as lead anchor on the show.
Sheila, the editor of a national tabloid paper, knows more about the game than Douglas does and believes Madeline is not his friend but is completely self-serving. The hit to his reputation could be a hit to her since they're a power couple. As their producer Toby (Ben Miles) treads the line between assuring Douglas and covering the network's own ass, Douglas insists on his innocence, but it's not looking good. And does Madeline really have his back – or aiming a knife at it?
Every twist and turn in Douglas is Cancelled is as compelling and head-turning as anything Steven Moffat writes. That's why he's one of the cleverest plotters in TV. He's an entertainer by reflex so he also gives the suspense drama a comedic screwball turn where any other British drama would make it handwringing and angsty. Even his dark murder thriller Inside Man is full of jokes layered over the moral dilemmas. Moffat claims to be not political in his writing, but as a British dramatist, he just has to write about what's going on around him, same with everything else he writes including Doctor Who. If you live in the UK, you can easily spot the real-life figures who might be inspirations or parallels with the characters in the story, but hey, this is fiction, and it's not "political", so just go with it, right?
Douglas is Cancelled is streaming on Britbox.
Douglas is Cancelled
8/10
A darkly satirical suspense drama about Cancel Culture and #MeToo, Steven Moffat's Douglas is Cancelled finds farce and jokes where other writers would make it handwringing and angsty, this makes it compulsively entertaining to watch a news anchor's life and career go into freefall when he says something inappropriate about women that goes viral, and the mystery of what he really said and whether his co-anchor has his back or is stabbing him in the back.
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