Douglas Is Cancelled: Is it the critics who are cancelling new ITV drama?https://t.co/APdd1l6DVh pic.twitter.com/LUDjJNhvQv
— The Herald (@heraldscotland) July 2, 2024
Predictably enough, the summer’s most divisive (so far) television drama is about a subject which is in itself endlessly divisive: cancel culture, defined by Collins Dictionary as “a social climate in which a person… is likely to be ostracized in response to a perceived wrongdoing.”
Other definitions are available, as the BBC is fond of saying.
The cancelled Douglas in question is fictitious news presenter Douglas Bellowes and, appropriately, the four-part series is called Douglas Is Cancelled.
And Douglas’s perceived wrongdoing? Telling a sexist joke at a wedding and being outed on social media.
But what it’s really about (if you stuck around past first episode)
[Spoiler (click to open)]A man who saw his female friend was terrified and left her in the hotel room with his boss to fend for herself so she decides to bring him down. And she succeeds.
The series is a Hartswood Films production for ITV and has been written by Paisley-born TV behemoth Steven Moffat.
For context, he is now 62 and married to producer Sue Vertue, daughter of uber-producer (and Hartswood Films founder) Beryl Vertue. “I just sat down and wrote this,” he has said. “Didn’t even tell anyone what I was doing.”
