As Douglas Is Cancelled prepares to air, Moffat talks about career implosions, Bonneville relives past nude scenes – and Kingston recalls the ‘wandering hands’ warnings she used to be given
Really don’t know that I would classify this as a comedy, maybe a joke, but definitely not funny…
The only people I could imagine liking this are the kind of “anti woke” gammon who fanboy for trump or Pierce Morgan. 🤢
I’m waiting for the headlines “Douglas is Cancelled is Cancelled”
If only, but sadly there are enough people out there who want this kind of content, many tv execs among them (I don’t doubt for a minute that many of them see themselves as “Douglas” - the potential victims of “the woke agenda” and feel it’s their mission to “educate” the public on why cancelling bigots is the worst thing happening in the world today). It’s basically a self portrait of those in charge…
A lot to assume fropm the description.
It may well be done in the way Alf Garnet was back in the 1970s.
As many here will be way to young to remember the character. He was the main character of a show called “Till Death Us Do Part” He and his wife were an old married couple. And required home help (government funded care coming in daily to help with keeping the house tidy etc).
The show was famous for the racist crap alf would sprout. Often to his Black home help worker. But in general he was expressing some of the worst 1930s ideals in a 1970s environment.
The best way to describe the ideal and general way most Brits understood it. Is to share the view Warren Mitchell the actor who played alf described it in an interview.
He was asked about the portraial of the character. To paraphrase his reply.
I was once approached by a guy on the street. Who told me he was a fan and loved the way Alf took the piss out of the “Darkies”. To this he responded. You idiot. It is **** like you we are taking the piss out of.
While if that event actually happened (who knows) it was clear that guy was not effected by the piss taking. As he did not even recognise it.
As a young man (early teens when that interview happened) who grew up with the show. It was very clear to everyone else that we were laughing at the character not with him. The show always managed to portray his views as either idiotic or just pathetic. He was seen as a scared old man worried about losing his power in society. Even by a 1970s audience at a time when most were way less informed about things then now.
Ill def agree such an attempt now would be difficult to pull off in the same way. And was likely less effective then the writers hoped in the 70s.
Id defiantly be interested to see if it can be done effectively with a modern audience.
Making the racist the butt of the joke is still openly airing and giving a platform to racism on tv, and as your anecdote proves, some people (those it’s actually aimed at) don’t see it as a joke at all because they are that person, and being the “star” of a tv show only emboldens them (and those who the bigotry targets are still the ones actually being targeted, whoever the butt of the joke supposedly is).
Also, that isn’t the case for this show, where it isn’t the bigot who is the butt of the joke, but those calling him out.
Either way, it was garbage then, and it’s garbage now, trying to make it ok somehow is completely missing the point (that both examples exists to pander to bigots, full stop).
Also, that isn’t the case for this show, where it isn’t the bigot who is the butt of the joke, but those calling him out.
I am curios what I have missed that indicates that. As I have not seen a script and cannot imagine the writers openly saying so.
There is no doubt folks in the 70s. Even those with the right intent made mistakes. And did what folks now would consider stupid. And I have no reason to assume the writers of this are not also making such mistakes.
But I have seen nothing that talks about the intent or plans of this show beyond it being about a news presenter getting cancelled. It really sounds like you think adressing the negativity of the anti woke crowd is impossible. While at the same time making some non evidenced rather nasty accusations about the writer of a show you haven’t seen?
This sounds woeful
Hugh Bonneville…nude scenes…
I wasn’t aware the Earl of Grantham has such a lascivious background. What would the Dowager Countess say?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When Douglas, a nationally trusted news host, suffers a social media pile-on about a private comment revealed online, he consults his agent, who warns him – with a vagueness that may have pleased ITV’s lawyers – that he risks the fate of fellow broadcasters “whatsisname and the other one”.
He mentions Simon Dee, the temperamental chatshow host who went from primetime to penury in 1970; Christopher Trace, let go from Blue Peter in 1967 after getting divorced; and Frank Bough, the news and sports presenter sacked by the BBC in 1987 in a sex and drugs scandal.
Because Hugh Bonneville’s Douglas is a bland, grey-haired anchor with a fondness for navy blue suits, as soon as publicity pictures appeared, some newspapers played a game of Who’s Huw?
“It’s orange and very thick,” adds Alex Kingston, who plays Douglas’s wife, a middle-market newspaper editor who has to choose between her marriage and exclusive access to tabloid scandal.
Misleading viewers about what they are seeing unites his work, from the sitcom Coupling to Sherlock and Doctor Who, and there are some bravura confusions in Douglas Is Cancelled: “Two episodes end with the same scene – though with one extra line the second time.
Douglas Is Cancelled contains deliberate references to jailed Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, with one key scene recreating him luring young women to hotel bathrooms.
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