Steven Moffat’s new ITV comedy-drama Douglas Is Cancelled has a lot to say about today’s social climate, but it seems critics are rather divided on how that message is delivered.
The new four-part show from the Doctor Who and Sherlock showrunner stars Hugh Bonneville and Karen Gillan, and revolves around the fallout after a news anchor is “cancelled” for making a sexist joke at a wedding.
With “cancel culture” being an especially big talking point in media circles these last few years, the show is a topical time, but its handling of the controversial subject matter isn’t quite sitting well with everyone.
One Guardian review described the “culture war” show as “skin-crawling”, adding: “This drama about a newsreader caught making misogynistic jokes is full of cartoonish depictions of young people. Steven Moffat’s latest is neither funny nor interesting.”
However, another preview piece in the same publication was more praising, describing Douglas Is Cancelled as a “juicy swipe at cancel culture”.
The Irish Independent was also unimpressed, writing that “the cancel culture mob don’t do nuance or subtlety, and neither does this”. The review went on: “Moffat, usually an extremely clever and inventive writer, seems to have written the script by taking a sledgehammer to the keyboard.”
The i newspaper’s critic seemed to have landed somewhere in the middle, calling the new comedy “uneven” but insisting it still had “plenty going for it”. The three-star review continued: “More importantly for a comedy, I laughed out loud more than once. This timely series might not be perfect, but – as it goes to great pains to point out – who is?”
Meanwhile, The New Statesman had high praise for the new show, writing: “There’s a lot to feast on here: a well-made farce of a script, blunt at times but all the better for it; a slew of slick, genuinely funny performances; convincing sets.”
The Times also praised the dialogue in particular, noting that the fast pace of one exchange “echoes the rat-a-tat dialogue of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing”.
Speaking in a recent interview with Metro, creator Steven responded to whether any real life scandals had inspired the script. “Not much, because the incidents I assume you’re referring to don’t have much in common with what we’re talking about,” he said.
“It doesn’t hurt in terms of I suppose talking about the show, but the reality is TV presenters have been getting themselves in trouble all the time forever.”
The new series also stars Alex Kingston, Ben Miles, Ramanique Ahluwalia, Diana Noris and Madeleine Power.
All four episodes of Douglas Is Cancelled are available to watch on ITVX now. The show will also air weekly on Thursday nights at 9pm on ITV1, beginning on 27 June.