Douglas is Cancelled: This cancel culture comedy-drama is full of stale ideas, cartoonish characters and glib dialogue

In a list of credits that includes Coupling, Doctor Who, on which he was showrunner from 2009 to 2017, Jekyll, Sherlock, Dracula and Inside Man, his only outright dud has been The Time Traveler’s Wife, which HBO cancelled after one six-episode season.

Unfortunately, Moffat puts both feet wrong with Douglas is Cancelled (UTV/ITV1, Thur, June 27), a comedy-drama about a popular news anchor whose career unravels after he’s overheard telling a sexist joke at a wedding and his indiscretion is leaked onto social media.

Moffat pointed out in several interviews that Douglas is Cancelled was not inspired by the career implosions of beloved TV faces such as Huw Edwards or Philip Schofield, or indeed anyone else.

He started work on it years ago, long before cancel culture was even a thing (the title came to him late in the process).

He originally thought about writing it as a stage play, then considered doing it as a film, before deciding it would work best as a four-parter for television.

We can take Moffat at his word, because Douglas is Cancelled definitely feels like something that was sitting in a drawer for years, gathering dust while the world turned.

Douglas is Cancelled definitely feels like something that was sitting in a drawer for years, gathering dust while the world turned.

The cancel culture mob don’t do nuance or subtlety, and neither does this. Moffat, usually an extremely clever and inventive writer, seems to have written the script by taking a sledgehammer to the keyboard.

It’s full of stale ideas, cartoonish characters and glib dialogue. A bunch of extremely talented actors are misdirected into giving performances so exaggerated, it’s a wonder nobody chokes to death on the scenery.

If a first-year RADA student hammed it up like this, they’d be back waiting tables by the end of the first term.

Douglas Is Cancelled - Trailer

Douglas (Hugh Bonneville) is a universally beloved, old-school newsreader of national treasure status.

Bonneville is on cruise control here, playing Douglas as a cross between his Mr Brown in the Paddington movies and his permanently bewildered Ian Fletcher in the BBC in-house satire W1A, with a light seasoning of seediness.

Douglas co-anchors a programme called Live at 6 with Madeline (Karen Gillan). They have the classic old bloke/young woman chemistry going on that viewers are supposed to love.

A flashback in a later episode reveals that Madeline was inspired to go into television by watching Douglas on the box as a child, and first met him 10 years earlier at a book signing of his.

Douglas considers Madeline his best friend. “She adores you!” someone assures him. The only one who can see that Madeline is cold, ruthlessly ambitious and can play Douglas like a fiddle is his wife Sheila (Alex Kingston).

This is possibly because Sheila, a tabloid newspaper editor who makes jokes about phone hacking, is also cold, ruthlessly ambitious and can play Douglas like a fiddle.

When whoever overheard Douglas’s off-colour joke shares it with the world on Twitter/X (although they don’t reveal exactly what he said), it’s Madeline who ensures it goes viral by retweeting it to her two million followers.

Somehow, she convinces gullible Douglas that she’s trying to help him, rather than trying to destroy him.

The main cast is rounded out by Ben Miles as Douglas’s sleazy boss and Simon Russell Beale as his useless agent. Nick Mohammed as the world’s unfunniest comedy writer and Joe Wilkinson as a company driver seem to be little more than afterthoughts.

As cardboard as all these characters are, they’re studies in human complexity compared to the younger ones. Douglas and Sheila’s sulky daughter — 20 going on 12 — stomps around shouting “micro-aggression” and “OK boomer” every two seconds, while Sheila’s PA talks in a quivering whisper and scuttles off to HR whenever anyone blinks at her. You don’t expect writing this lazy from Moffat.

Yes, we all know Gen Z can be a pain, but this often feels like a 62-year-old man’s four-hour gripe at young people who don’t know they’re born.