Douglas Is Cancelled: A Brilliant, Uncomfortable, Unmissable Watch
Somehow, Douglas Is Cancelled crossed my path on a social media platform or other that I happened to be scrolling through rather than doing the important work that I should’ve been doing. I had not heard of it, even though England has already seen it.
After putting together BritBox’s one-week free trial—which I assure you, I will never cancel—I started watching it. It’s quick. No scrolling through anything while you’re watching. The dialogue is snap, snap, snap, and if there’s a criticism at all, it might be that it’s just a little bit too fast to keep up with. Like Hamilton. So you have to be on your toes paying attention. You can feel your brain synapsing. No time for your phone screen.
And it’s good. No, it’s great. It’s funny. No, it’s hilarious at points. But the entire time you’re laughing—sometimes out loud—there’s this underlying current in the first episode of discomfort. Sort of like when someone goes on too long and they know it, and you know it, but you don’t know what to say to help them out of it.
The storyline? Take Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston’s The Morning Show, which I don’t recall having any comedic moments in its three seasons, combine it with Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, which had the perfect combination of drama and comedy, and then take it up a notch.
Douglas, Hugh Bonneville to the rest of the world, is etched in all our minds from Downton Abbey, and it’s hard to take him out of that, especially when he shows up on the screen in black tie. He is a beloved TV anchor who has, for decades, walked Britain through the news. His partner on the anchor desk is his 20-year junior, Madeline Crow, played by Karen Gillan. You’re not sure about their relationship. Sometimes you like one, sometimes you like the other. Neither one of them allows you to be flat-footed as you watch. You have to be on your toes. And you have to watch the screen like you’ve never watched the screen before because two-thirds of what they’re saying is happening on their faces rather than out of their mouths. I would love to read the script. The direction in the script might’ve been longer than the actual dialogue. Or not. Maybe these two actors are so strong, so good, so connected to the other characters that they played that they were able to do it on their own. I tend to think not.
I don’t want to give you the plot. It’s listed as a comedy. It’s also listed as a drama. I don’t think it’s either one. I think it’s a tragedy. And it’s not a Greek tragedy. It’s a gender tragedy. And the reason it is so brilliant is because it doesn’t allow you to look away. The writer, Steven Moffat, has been nominated for Emmys 57 times and 134 times, and I never knew his name. I consider myself to be well-versed in television and film. Not in what is written about it, but in actually watching it. Silly me. Keeping my subscription to BritBox and starting to watch more of it—less of American lightweight programming—will change that. I promise. Join me in raising our level of intellectual curiosity about what could be on the screen.
So after I watched the first episode, I called a cohort of mine who likes a lot of the same film and television, and I told her she had to start watching it right away. Immediately. Yesterday, in fact. And then I proceeded to binge the next three episodes to the very end. And I realized I might need to call her back and tell her that I was wrong. It’s not the funniest thing ever and smart too. It’s really important in understanding the gender dynamics that are so complex that we just can never seem to climb out of the holes we have dug over centuries of power-based interactions between men and women. And I’m sorry that I told her it was really funny and brilliant, but it’s not really my fault because they—and when I say they, I mean the combination of everybody: director Ben Palmer, actors, writer Steven Moffat, and even the cinematographer—are so good that looking back, I should’ve realized in the first episode the enormity of what I would be watching. But I didn’t.
I noticed that on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s got a 77%. I’m done with Rotten Tomatoes just like I’m done with the Academy Awards. Rotten Tomatoes is a male-dominated voting pool, and women should take it into consideration whenever determining where they’re going to spend their hard-earned hours watching television or a film. Rotten Tomatoes is rotten to the core. End of sentence.
I want to interview our writer, Steve Moffat. I want to ask him how he got it so right from her point of view. Did he talk to somebody? Is he married? Can I have lunch with his wife or his mother?
I also want to thank him. It’s a tough conversation to have on the screen. Whoever put the entire team together deserves to know that they were brilliant at doing it because any mistake along the way would’ve cost the show its entire credibility and brilliance. Just one little miscast. Going on one second longer than you made us wait, which often seems like sometimes an eternity, like when you’re waiting for turbulence to end. I can’t take one more bump. And it’s not in the buildup that he does it, but rather in every single scene. And not like when scenes go on too long and you already got the point, but rather when you’re not allowed to look away because the girl going through it didn’t have the option of making it hurry so she could get out alive. And I mean that in the figurative sense.
Don’t be turned off by my exaggerated statements here, or grand engagement of how great it is. It’s four 40-minute episodes. Watch it all at once. Leave your phone in the other room. Do yourself a favor. Women who have gone through this deserve your attention.
Too much? Watch it and then tell me.