Douglas Is Cancelled (ITV1) | ITVX
The Bear (Disney+)
Suranne Jones: Investigating Witch Trials (Channel 4) | channel4.com
BBC Prime Ministerial Debate (BBC One) | iPlayer
You could end up feeling issue-bombed by Douglas Is Cancelled, the new ITV1 comedy-drama from Steven Moffat. Cancel culture, culture wars, #MeToo, generational clashes… and more. Pumped out over four episodes, it’s hardcore thematic overload.
Hugh Bonneville plays Douglas, who hosts a TV show with Madeline (Karen Gillan, who worked with Moffat on Doctor Who). Their screen-couple dynamic screams: “Phil and Holly’s This Morning bust-up” (so kudos to ITV for sucking that up). When Douglas is overheard saying something sexist at a wedding (it takes a while to learn what it is), a minor online fracas is escalated by Madeline tweeting “supportively” to her 2 million followers. As Douglas’s flying monkeys (including Ben Miles as his producer) swoop in, the focus is on the increasingly Machiavellian Madeline.
Bonneville is convincing as Douglas (the kind of mainstream nonentity who fails upwards; strong echoes of his BBC exec Ian Fletcher in W1A), but for all that the series is stuffed with spiky references (Huw Edwards, Prince Andrew, Harvey Weinstein), it feels a mite forced, plodding and dated. Maybe because Moffat originally conceived DIC as a stage play, the dialogue is, well, a bit theatrical (“Bland is good. Bland survives”).
As Douglas’s tabloid newspaper editor wife, Alex Kingston is lumbered with such overheated lines (“Outrage is exciting. Nuance is work. Douglas is cancelled”) it’s a wonder she doesn’t start billowing steam like a freshly boiled kettle. Young people, mainly represented by Douglas’s daughter (Madeleine Power), are reduced to vindictive vacuous cartoons (“Dad, I really don’t want to cancel you”), but neither are older characters entirely credible. In his job, in this climate, would Douglas really keep exclaiming: “All this fuss over a stupid joke!”?
It’s still watchable. The flashback in a powerful third episode helps to make the hitherto inexplicably malevolent Madeline human (flushing with humiliation as realisation dawns). Douglas Is Cancelled ends up making a nuanced point (some do wrong; others facilitate it); it’s just a bit of a flat-footed slog to get there.
If tweezers are fastidiously transporting sprigs of herbs to plates against a backdrop of lightly seasoned existential angst, it can only mean one thing: Christopher Storer’s award-garlanded Chicago restaurant drama The Bear is back for its much-anticipated third series on Disney+.
Last seen at the end of the last series quietly (and unquietly) losing it on his fine dining restaurant’s launch night while trapped in a walk-in fridge, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) emerges owing a tattered bouquet of apologies, not least to his love interest, Claire (Molly Gordon), but will he deliver?
Since it started, this dramedy phenomenon has morphed into a long, messy cigarette break of the soul and in some ways, it’s business as usual: Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) resentfully observing Carmy (that glare, like a slowly surfacing shark); the incomparable Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) once again rocking up to steal the show as Mommie Dearest (Italian division); the others falling into their allotted roles in one of the closest, funniest, most dysfunctional “found families” television has ever created. Long-suffering Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) has been offered a partnership at the restaurant (does she want it?). Carmy wants a Michelin star, deluding himself that plaudits can save him from his tornado of mental health issues.
It’s not perfect. There’s too much pompous drivel about “legacy” and, no offence to Olivia Colman, but the overlong segues featuring her irritatingly beatific chef grate like stale parmesan. The Bear works best as a prestige US blue-collar ensemble piece that frees itself to make strange and inspired artistic leaps, such as when the opening episode unravels almost into stream of consciousness. By now you’ll have decided if you like the show, and I love it, greedily gobbling down every episode as if it were a sonnet on a plate. Pop on your napkin (cloth, paper, doesn’t matter) and enjoy.
Over to Channel 4 for an absorbing two-part docuseries, Suranne Jones: Investigating Witch Trials. Lucy Worsley delivered an interesting study on the witch trials a couple of years ago on BBC Two, and it was inevitable this new series would cover much of the same historical, political and cultural territory, yet Jones brings a freshness to the subject.
Starting in Pendle, Lancashire, near where she was raised, which saw 10 people (eight women) hanged in England’s first mass execution of accused witches in 1612, Jones succeeds by doggedly exploring locations of famous trials, and through the sheer force of her fascination and zeal.
“Are we ready to talk witches?” she grins in the introduction. “I’m feeling it, yeah, I’m feeling witchy!” Later in the opener, she joins musician Bat for Lashes (AKA Natasha Khan) for a full-on witchy/feminist session of howling and tarot reading (anyone else get flashbacks to being a teenage goth?). Still, Jones is horrified when shown into the cold, dank dungeons, where the Pendle witches awaited their fate, during which time one of them, an 80-year-old, woman perished.
As the presenter illustrates, with women the vast majority of accused, the history of witch persecution meshes neatly with the wider story of misogyny. For the second programme she visits the notorious US city Salem and also looks into modern-day versions of “witch trials” (not least online). I’m not as taken with this episode (it gets a little woolly), but Jones is a natural documentarian: enthused, relaxed and genuine.
Live from Nottingham, chaired by Mishal Husain, came the BBC Prime Ministerial Debate, the final mano a mano between the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and Labour Party leader Keir Starmer before the election.
Sunak has become startlingly rude: shouting, sneering, boorishly interrupting. I understand he’s fighting for his political life (going by the polls, it must feel as if he’s been handed a goblet of fizzing cyanide), but (dude!) keep it classy.
Otherwise, it was much the same as past encounters (NHS; betting scandal; cost of living; immigration). If such televised debates have a tendency to become political groundhog day (with added hissy fits), at least they remind us to vote wisely.
Star ratings (out of five)
Douglas Is Cancelled ★★★
The Bear ★★★★
Suranne Jones: Investigating Witch Trials ★★★
BBC Prime Ministerial Debate ★★★
What else I’m watching
My Lady Jane
(Prime Video)
Riotous, sexing-up-the-Tudors comedy about Lady Jane Grey, starring Emily Bader (above) as a feminist Jane. For those who enjoy their history along more playful The Great-esque lines.
Toads
(Channel 4)
A sharply amusing comedy short in which comedian and writer Amy Gledhill reflects on getting married and all the bad men (toads) she’s kissed along the way. Give this one a series!
Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge
(Disney+)
The eventful life of the fashion designer who invented the wrap dress makes for a stimulating documentary. Hillary Clinton is among the interviewees.
