Douglas Is Cancelled spoilers follow – including its ending.
What did Douglas say? This is the question that runs through ITV's brand-new drama Douglas Is Cancelled.
From the off, we know that broadcaster Douglas (played by Hugh Bonneville) has been accused of telling a sexist – or misogynist, take your pick – "joke" at a private family wedding. The accusation has come from a random account on Twitter, with the full details of what Douglas said left to the imagination.
Douglas is a popular TV news presenter, a "national treasure", we're told. The insinuation that he may have said something sexist, despite the lack of detail, is apparently enough to throw his reputation into question – particularly when his younger and more culturally savvy co-presenter Madeline Crow (portrayed in a scene-stealing performance by Karen Gillan) sends out a dubious tweet of her own. But is she supporting him, or is there something more at play here?
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The four-part drama from Doctor Who boss Steven Moffat has been presented as a "cancel-culture drama" – in and of itself, a fairly eye-roll-inducing concept.
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Whether it's Douglas' pantomime-villain wife – a cutthroat newspaper editor and self-proclaimed ruiner of lives – or his self-serving agent, who's ready to cut and run at the first sign of trouble, each and every character is preoccupied with trying to find out what our titular protagonist actually said.
But as it will turn out by the show's end, Douglas Is Cancelled was actually about something else. While the first two episodes painted Douglas in a more sympathetic light – a bumbling media fixture who things seemed to just happen around – the third episode turned things on their head.
We were taken back to Madeline's beginnings as a fresh-faced, budding journalist, who looked up to Douglas as something of a mentor. Striving for a similar career path, she eventually applied for a job as his co-anchor – but the "interview" was to take place in a big-shot producer's hotel room, where he pressured her into drinking wine and helping him to run a bath.
These scenes were the most uncomfortable of the series (yes, even more uncomfortable than how the show treated its younger generation) and put a different spin on the story that was actually being told.
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Douglas, who was down at the bar being schmoozed at an industry event at the time of Madeline's so-called interview, had a sudden attack of conscience. As the drinks flowed and those around him stroked his ego, Douglas began questioning the ethics of a powerful producer dangling a life-changing job opportunity over a new starter behind a closed hotel-room door. Because, duh.
But when his gut drove him to go up to the room to investigate, he had the privilege of walking away from the discomfort. Instead of intervening, he simply told himself that Madeline was "wading through" what she needed to get what she wanted.
In the final episode's showdown – the mock interview for Douglas's impending Newsnight interrogation – Madeline discovered that she had been correct in her hunch that the "joke" Douglas had told at the wedding had been at her expense. In fact, it hadn't been a joke at all, but the story of their first proper introduction in that fateful hotel-room doorway.
Douglas had incorrectly gone away from that encounter assuming that Madeline had got the job by sleeping with the boss. Words aside, here lay the inherent misogyny and the blissful ignorance of the power dynamics that had been at play that day – despite being confronted with the terrified look on Madeline's face.
Sure Douglas wasn't the one being sleazy and exerting his power over Madeline, but he also wasn't using it to stop any wrongdoing from occurring either. Instead, he just walked away, and turned her trauma into a line he used at parties to make other men laugh.
There's certainly a question mark over how well Douglas Is Cancelled manages to tackle this subject matter. But by the end, the show isn't what it may have initially said on the tin – and for that, at least, we're grateful.
Douglas is Cancelled is available to stream in full on ITVX, and is airing weekly on ITV1 at 9pm on Thursdays.
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TV Editor, Digital Spy Laura has been watching television for over 30 years and professionally writing about entertainment for almost 10 of those. Previously at LOOK and now heading up the TV desk at the UK's biggest TV and movies site Digital Spy, Laura has helped steer conversations around some of the most popular shows on the box. Laura has appeared on Channel 5 News and radio to talk viewing habits and TV recommendations. As well as putting her nerd-level Buffy knowledge to good use during an IRL meet with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Laura also once had afternoon tea with One Direction, has sat around the fire pit of the Love Island villa, spoken to Sir David Attenborough about the world's oceans and even interviewed Rylan from inside the Big Brother house (housemate status, forever pending).
