It’s hard to remember a show as salivatingly anticipated by certain quarters as Cast Away. Thanks to a careful drip-feed of details in the press, the show has promised nothing less than poor old cancelled, curdled Phillip Schofield going full Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? on a desert island.
Believe the hype and you’d think that the show, a three-part special in which Schofield has to film himself marooned on a remote island for 10 days, was going to be nothing but Schofield naming names and burning everything down because he has nothing else to lose. But while that may still come to pass – twice the show’s sizzle reel shows Schofield wild-eyed and unshaven, declaring himself to be ‘thrown under a bus’ – in truth the opening episode feels like two completely different shows in one.
As you may recall, the last we saw of Schofield was in the aftermath of his departure from This Morning, for conducting an extramarital affair with a runner working on the programme. Schofield lost his job, This Morning almost went down with him, and ITV faced a parliamentary inquiry about its duty of care to staff. In a clutch of interviews in the immediate aftermath of the scandal, Schofield looked absolutely hunted. That was one year and three months ago.
And now here he is, forging what will either be the first seeds of a television comeback or the incontrovertible death knell of his career. Honestly, at this point it’s hard to tell which way it’s going to go.
Because, whatever you think of the man, you do have to grudgingly admit that the parts where he carries out the actual premise of the show – on an island, sunburned to hell, trying to Go-Pro himself boiling limpets for sustenance – are pretty entertaining. Decades on the telly have taught Schofield how to effectively communicate whatever he happens to be doing. As such, the parts where he’s actually fending for himself, whether that’s by seeking out water or chasing crabs through the forest, work tremendously well. He’s frank and funny and self-effacing about his lack of survival instinct. During these sequences, it’s almost like nothing ever happened.
However (and this is a big however), the man absolutely cannot help himself. It’s one thing to fend for yourself in the middle of nowhere, quite another to do it without acting like the most bitter man ever to walk the Earth. And make no mistake, Schofield is an incredibly bitter man. Before he even leaves his house, he’s comparing Cast Away to I’m a Celebrity, darkly muttering that he would never appear on that show because “there are just some channels, some people you won’t work for.”
Even his farewell meal with his family coagulates into something nasty, as he mockingly asks his daughter “Are you OK?” with the same faux-concern Holly Willoughby addressed the This Morning viewership after the scandal. He also repeatedly mentions that some people will wish he stayed on the island for ever, or even died there, such is the colossal scale of his self-aggrandising victimhood.
Admittedly, a lot of this is down to the way the episodes have been constructed. The bulk of Schofield’s whining comes during a pre-interview which has been chopped up and spread throughout the hour, to give a sense that he’s permanently preoccupied with the state of his career.
But even on the island, where he seems happier to just get on with the task at hand, he’s not immune to moments of ugly self-mythologising. One video diary entry is taken up with him tearfully recollecting the time a big tattooed man gave him a hug while reassuring him that “They’re all shits, mate.” Moments like this genuinely make you worry that Schofield might actually see himself as a folk hero, rather than a bloke who got sacked for having an inappropriate workplace relationship.
He also falls prey to the classic curse of the cancelled. “If you’re cancelled, you’re dead,” he mutters, which would be a decent sentiment if – all together now – he wasn’t literally saying this during a primetime broadcast on a terrestrial British television channel. Just the smallest trace of self-awareness at his situation would go a long way.
The effect of all this is the lingering sensation that Phillip Schofield has become his own worst enemy. When the show is about literal survival, it borders on great. But when the show just acts as an opportunity for Schofield to self-indulgently lick his wounds about the state of his career – and it is that, a lot – then you lose all respect for the guy.
Once again, it’s worth pointing out that Channel 5 wants you to believe that the really meaty stuff – all the Col Kurtz moments where Schofield torches his legacy to the ground – are in the two episodes yet to come. But, honestly, who has time? Sadly, the truth is that most people care a lot less about Phillip Schofield’s career than Phillip Schofield would like.
Cast Away aired on Channel 5.
