Douglas Is Cancelled: Hugh Bonneville plays a shamed news presenter

Cancel culture has been "crying out to be skewered on telly", said Carol Midgley in The Times. "Now, Steven Moffat has done it with 'Douglas Is Cancelled' (ITV), a spiky satire about sexism, hypocrisy, confected outrage and stellar careers being toppled by a single tweet." 

Hugh Bonneville plays Douglas, an "avuncular national-treasure anchorman" who gets drunk at a family wedding and is overheard making a "sexist joke". Someone tweets about it; then "the shit hits the fan". 

Douglas insists he can't remember what he said, though it seems in character; then things get "spicier" when his colleague Madeline (an "excellent" Karen Gillan) weighs in on the row. The four-parter is sometimes rather "on the nose", but "mostly it is clever and sharp", and its denouement is unexpected, which is a bonus. 

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The series is being marketed as a "comedy drama", said Nick Hilton in The Independent, but the laughs are few and far between. And it's annoying, too, that Gillan and Bonneville talk in newsroom clichés, such as: "The truth is useful, but I'd prefer something a little more balanced." Douglas's Gen Z daughter (Madeleine Power), meanwhile, is given "clunkers" such as: "Dad, I believe you – hashtag: total confidence."

It starts out promisingly enough, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph, but the plot soon becomes illogical; and the two main female characters are terribly written. Madeline is forced to deliver "atrocious speeches about feminism", and Douglas's wife (Alex Kingston) is a "harridan who hates Madeline because she is younger and has 'blowjob eyes'". Overall, it's pretty "dreadful".