Steven Moffat reveals truth behind Douglas is Cancelled and link to real TV presenters

Steven Moffat’s latest TV project tells the story of a news presenter facing a possible career-ending mistake after apparently being caught telling a sexist joke at a wedding.

The four part-series Douglas is Cancelled stars Hugh Bonneville as Douglas Bellowes, a widely respected anchor who presents the fictional programme Live at Six alongside Madeline Crow, played by Karen Gillan.

However, after a nameless social media account reveals they overheard him saying something inappropriate in public, Douglas faces an online storm while also trying to convince his colleagues and family that whatever he said wasn’t actually that bad.

Despite the show’s title, the story takes a turn and is about far more than the rise of cancel culture.

However Steven has responded to questions about whether his script was inspired by any real presenter whose career ended in tatters.

‘Not much, because the incidents I assume you’re referring to don’t have much in common with what we’re talking about,’ he told Metro.co.uk.

Steven Moffat has described the inspiration behind his new series Douglas is Cancelled (Picture: Alan Chapman/ Dave Benett/ Getty Images)

‘It doesn’t hurt in terms of I suppose talking about the show, but the reality is TV presenters have been getting themselves in trouble all the time forever.

‘I could have proposed this show in any time, and someone would have said “isn’t there a story related to this?”. That’s just the reality of what happens if you insist on recruiting humans to do jobs where human frailty is regarded as a deficit.’

Instead, he explained that the script, which was initially conceived as a play more than five years ago, came about after he heard an anecdote that piqued his interest.

The screenwriter was told that a ‘prominent individual was being rehearsed for an interview by a junior colleague’.

‘That’s exactly what happened, someone told me, and I can’t give you names. I just thought, “Oh, wow I would love to be in that room” to see what goes on there because surely the junior colleague is going to stick it to the senior colleague as best they can. I mean, that’s just an extraordinary psychological challenge there,’ he explained.

The four-part show stars Hugh Bonneville as Douglas Bellowes and Karen Gillan as Madeline Crow (Picture: ITV)

After working on shows like Doctor Who and Sherlock in the past, Steven said he loved writing a script where there wasn’t a clear hero figure, if any at all.

‘The story of the perfect hero is never told because the perfect hero is boring,’ he said, but adding that by the end, one character does ‘decide to play the game better than anyone else’.

He also said that the series challenged him to ‘keep the tension all the time’ as he couldn’t ‘rely on somebody jumping out of a window or a giant monster rearing up or something’.

However, when it came to filming the series, the pace of the dialogue ended up leaving him wondering how to fill time after episodes kept coming up short.

‘It was a delightful conundrum in some ways, because I was really loving the pace that it was taking with the cast doing so on their instinct, but 60-page scripts were not making the 40-minute episode length,’ he explained.

The TV presenter faces a career ending slip-up when caught making a sexist joke (Picture: Sally Mais)

‘Sue (Vertue) my wife (and the show’s producer), kept saying “you’re going to have to slow them down” but I said I didn’t think we could because we will make it worse if we do that.’

Instead, the decision was made to include scenes in the closing credits that focused on driver and wannabe comedy writer Tom (Joe Wilkinson).

‘I actually rather like those scenes because they’re so unexpected at the end, too. Because if you are taking things at a pace, there are moments when the audience go, “just give me a moment to sit”, after listening to machine gun dialogue,’ he shared.

With public figures facing the possibility of a social media slip-up or past questionable comments re-emerging and threatening their careers, those behind the cameras have also found themselves facing the ire of people who call out their past work.

However, Steven doesn’t mince his words when discussing how he feels about writers being criticised  for decades-old projects.

‘In general, I don’t have much tolerance for that kind of behaviour – what you’re literally doing is accusing people in the past of being unable to predict the future. Well, I mean, listen, don’t be stupid, because you can’t predict the future either,’ he said.

‘We’re all doing our best. But getting irate about what somebody said on television in the past is a bit bloody silly. Talk about picking a soft target.

‘There’s plenty of injustice in the world. There’s plenty of things you could be doing that would really help. But “oh no, I think I’ll complain about something made in television in 1977”. Go away.’

Douglas is Cancelled also stars Alex Kingston as the titular character’s wife Sheila, Simon Russell Beale as his agent Bentley, Ben Miles as producer Toby Patterson, Madeleine Power as his daughter Claudia and Nick Mohammed as Morgan, a comedy writer tasked with trying to minimise the fall out with mixed results.

Douglas is Cancelled starts tonight at 9pm on ITV1. All four episodes are now streaming on ITVX.

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