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June 21, 2024 - 1:00pm
In 2017, I co-wrote a stage show about cancel culture called Jonathan Pie: Back to the Studio. The main problem we faced then was that, at the time, cancel culture was widely considered a “Right-wing myth”, and so we had to find a way to dramatise its effects to an audience of Leftist sceptics. Our approach was to have Pie make an offensive joke early in the show, and end with the revelation that it had been secretly filmed and posted online by an audience member. The climax saw him scrolling through the endless abuse and righteous anger on Twitter, his career as a news reporter in tatters.
Fast-forward seven years, and cancel culture is now an acceptable topic for prime-time television drama. ITV’s new series Douglas is Cancelled, written by Steven Moffat, tells the story of news anchor Douglas Bellowes (played by Hugh Bonneville) who finds himself the subject of a social media storm due to an overheard joke he makes at a wedding. It is clear that writers no longer have to worry about debating the existence of cancel culture, or explaining it as they go along. Virtually everyone now recognises the power of the online mob.
So the fact that a series like Douglas is Cancelled has been commissioned at all is reassuring. It suggests that our society is waking up to the problem. Helen Pluckrose, one of the most effective critics of this new authoritarianism, puts it thus: “At this point, anybody claiming that people have not been getting fired and cancelled are conspiracy theorists beyond even those who claim the moon landing or Sandy Hook was fake.” One wonders what the chief practitioners of cancel culture will make of Douglas is Cancelled, and whether they will dismiss it as another symptom of what former Tory MP Dehenna Davison recently described as a “mythical culture war”.
Cancel culture has all the ingredients for a superb farce: misunderstandings and mayhem, high-status characters in humiliating situations, events that escalate so rapidly that those involved are left in a state of total confusion. The subject is therefore perfect for Moffat, whose Nineties sitcom Joking Apart brought the art of farce back to the BBC. He also wrote the funniest and most farcical episode of the Dawn French series Murder Most Horrid, which concerned a suicidal social worker who inadvertently becomes an assassin. His riotous 2022 stage play The Unfriend told the unlikely story of a suburban couple who, out of politeness, end up inviting a psychopath into their home.
Douglas is Cancelled sees Moffat apply these skills where they are most needed. If ever a subject required satirical attention, it’s the cruelty of the various judges, juries and executioners of the online realm — and Moffat has pitched the tone just right. The dialogue has that slightly heightened quality of stage writing, which means that his characters are able to indulge in improbably smart witticisms and barbs that would detract from a more realistic drama. It could have worked as a sitcom, but the series format is an effective way to revel in the farcical acceleration of incidents while simultaneously building a sense of gradual menace.
This is achieved most notably through the character of Douglas’s daughter Claudia (Madeleine Power), the sort of entitled, privileged young “cry-bully” with pretensions to activism who has become so commonplace in the culture wars. Elsewhere, we see Douglas’s wife Sheila (Alex Kingston), an editor at the kind of tabloid newspaper that would normally make mincemeat of cancelled celebrities, facing off against an assistant who weaponises her mental health problems to wield power over her boss.
Naturally, there are echoes of real-life controversies in Douglas is Cancelled. One joke makes a subtle reference to the accusations levelled last year against Huw Edwards, and the tensions between Douglas and his on-the-sofa partner Madeline (Karen Gillan) are reminiscent of the gossip about Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield.
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