ITVX’s recent drama serial Douglas Is Cancelled draws on several of society’s current trends to produce an unsettling description of how status impacts on people. Its writer, Steven Moffat, is known particularly for his contributions to more fantastical fare such as Doctor Who and Sherlock. His best scripts carefully guide how much information the viewers and characters have as the story progresses, often by playing around with story structure. Douglas Is Cancelled uses techniques (and actors) familiar from Moffat’s other work, with its subject matter being the television industry itself. Potential viewers are warned that ‘spoilers’ about how the plot is resolved are mentioned below.
The Douglas of the title, portrayed by Hugh Bonneville, is a longstanding TV journalist, co-hosting a popular news programme with the younger Madeline, played by Karen Gillan. A social media post accusing Douglas of telling a sexist joke at a wedding goes viral, leading to concerns among Douglas, his agent, and his producer Toby (Ben Miles), that enough of a negative reaction and suspicions of chauvinism will get him ‘cancelled’. The backdrop of social media being crucial in how we perceive people is a given. Anyone with a profile on X, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok knows they’ve put themselves in an arena where their words are scrutinised and judged publicly, with the stakes being higher for those already in the public eye, such as trusted television news presenters. Even a hint of scandal creates interest, and each repost, comment or like lucratively promotes the social media platform itself as well as whatever’s trending. The combative nature of online discourse is represented in the drama by Douglas’s teenage daughter, sensitive to any kind of perceived offence.
The focus of Douglas Is Cancelled isn’t ‘cancel culture’ though, but the culture of the news media industry. The script contains many cynical swipes at journalism, such as Toby saying of journalists, ‘having opinions about things we didn’t witness is the entire point of our existence’, and Madeline using ‘every dirty trick’ interviewers employ to get to their subject. Key to the plot is when Douglas angrily says ‘the truth needs a little help now and then… our audience wouldn’t understand the truth even if we had the guts to tell it or knew what it was in the first place’. In the context of the story, these lines lead to Douglas’s downfall because of how they dismiss both his audience and his profession, even though he’s right to recognise that journalism isn’t as objective as it pretends. The bias of a mainstream media outlet reflects the prerogatives of its owners, with their ‘truth’ being a stance which both reinforces their own position, however subtly, and less subtly, also attracts viewers and therefore income.
The media’s attitude to the truth isn’t really the focus of Douglas Is Cancelled, though. Its target turns out to be how the industry has mistreated women. Much of episode three is a flashback to just before Madeline secured the job as co-presenter, set in a hotel room where Toby is trying to manipulate her into having sex with him, using psychological tricks to confuse and control her. This thread of the story reminds us of the accusations of sexual harassment and rape made against American film mogul Harvey Weinstein and others, which revealed the extent of abuse in the industry. In the drama, Toby uses the influence he has as an established producer over Madeline, who is made vulnerable by being at the start of her career. He has this influence because of the imbalance of power between his position and hers. Employment, and the hierarchies which it involves, inherently encourages us to objectify people and treat them according to their status in the organisation. Some people, such as Toby and his real-life counterparts, represent how this attitude can lead to the most dehumanising and damaging extremes. The drama doesn’t only highlight how abusers have operated, but also that people like Douglas, who ignored the situation Madeline was in and then made jokes about it, enable the perpetrators. Even though the ‘casting couch culture’ is being exposed and tackled in real life, the conditions which create it remain.
Despite being promoted as a ‘comedy drama’, Douglas Is Cancelled describes a grim, sordid news industry, with relationships shaped by rank within the profession and by the cut and thrust of social media beyond. The similarities to real life situations make the serial very much a product of, and reflection of our times. But behind the modern trappings of social media and anti-social media executives, an old story is being retold. When a workplace, an industry and, indeed a society is structured so that some individuals are in a position of power over others, then the resulting hierarchies allow some people to become abusers. Legislation, policies and procedures aim to prevent and ameliorate harm, but can’t address the structural causes which enable abuse. Employment itself is exploitative, even if when it doesn’t involve people as toxic as presented in Douglas Is Cancelled. The damage caused by and to the characters is expertly acted by the serial’s small cast, helped by a precisely-crafted and perceptive script.
Mike Foster
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