From national treasure to never work again: The real-life TV scandals and online onslaught with eerie echoes of ITV drama Douglas Is Cancelled

Steven Moffat’s new satirical drama about a ‘national treasure’ news presenter whose career is derailed by cancel culture has eerie echoes of real-life TV scandals that have triggered online frenzies.

The Doctor Who and Sherlock showrunner first started working on a script for a comedy-drama on cancel culture in 2017 – before the term had been popularised.

Seven years later, Douglas Is Cancelled has taken social media by storm as fans speculate over which star inspired the story about a beloved TV presenter whose career is at risk of being ended overnight.

Douglas Is Cancelled tells the story of a news presenter called Douglas Bellowes, played by Hugh Bonneville, who is left fighting to save his career after being accused on X of making ‘an extremely sexist joke’ at a wedding.

The four episodes then follow Bellowe’s relationship with Madeline Crow – his younger, more dynamic colleague portrayed by Karen Gillan – and how she is forced to pick a side when an online mob condemn him.

Moffat says he had become overly familiar with the threat of being cancelled himself – and although he has never been accused of misconduct, he has routinely been attacked online for his choice of storylines, casting and dialogue. 

Moffat insists that the series is not based on ‘any actual incident’ but that the drama ‘does exist in a world in which all that has happened’. 

Douglas Is Cancelled was already in the works when reality started to catch up with it. 

Steven Moffat’s new satirical drama about a ‘national treasure’ news presenter whose career is derailed by cancel culture has eerie echoes of real-life TV scandals that have triggered an online frenzy

Douglas Is Cancelled’s first episode has reignited speculation around which star acted as writer Steven Moffat’s inspiration

The series tells the story of a ‘national treasure’ news presenter, played by Hugh Bonneville , who is left fighting to save his career after being accused on X of making a sexist joke 

In March 2021, Piers Morgan quit Good Morning Britain after refusing to apologise for ‘disbelieving’ Meghan Markle’s claims in her interview with Oprah Winfrey.

He left his role shortly after storming off on set after a row with weatherman Alex Beresford over his comments on Meghan, which prompted 58,000 complaints to Ofcom. 

He wrote at the time: ‘I’ve lost my job at Good Morning Britain because I chose not to apologise for disbelieving Meghan Markle’s claims in her interview with Oprah Winfrey.

‘I thus became the latest ”victim” of the cancel culture that is permeating our country, every minute, of every hour, of everyday. Though of course, I consider myself to be neither a victim, nor actually cancelled.’

In May 2023, veteran TV presenter Phillip Schofield quit This Morning after more than 20 years when it was revealed that he was having an affair with a much younger runner on the show.

Schofield, who has been married to Stephanie Lowe since 1993, admitted to the Mail that he had an ‘unwise but not illegal’ with the unnamed colleague, who was more than 30 years his junior.

It’s been rumoured that the fling that cost his career is set to be played out on television screens across the country in a ‘jaw-dropping’ drama. 

Just two months later, BBC newsreader Huw Edwards was suspended over allegations he paid a teenager thousands of pounds for sexual images. 

The presenter was not named when the story first broke, with led to mass online speculation about which star was at the centre of the allegations. 

Edwards’ wife, Vicky Flind, eventually named him after ‘five extremely difficult days’, revealing he was receiving in-hospital care after suffering a ‘serious episode’ of mental health issues.

Moffat said he was not surprised to see these downfalls echoing his scripts. 

‘I don’t know that there’s a moment in history where you wouldn’t have had something like this recently,’ Moffat told the Financial Times as he drew on a distinction between the severity of allegations that are often lumped together.

‘As far as I can see, neither [Schofield nor Edwards] harmed anyone . . . If we all have our lives destroyed because we’ve been unwise, then we’re all going down.’

The star of his show, Bonneville, added: ‘The way they were handled in the press is extraordinary.

‘[Judgment] has become instantaneous with social media as judge, jury and executioner, no due process and an assumption of guilt. Of course, if crimes have been committed they must be prosecuted, but our press has always thrived on the idea of another person for the tumbril. I’ve stopped using Twitter because it has become so utterly poisonous.’

Both Schofield and Edwards were regarded as national treasures until their downfall last year. 

In March 2021, Piers Morgan quit Good Morning Britain after refusing to apologise for ‘disbelieving’ Meghan Markle’s claims in her interview with Oprah Winfrey

Phillip Schofield quit This Morning after 20 years and later revealed he had an affair. The scandal triggered an online frenzy

BBC Newsreader Huw Edwards was suspended over allegations he paid a teenager thousands of pounds for sexual images. He was not initially named which caused online speculation

Edwards, Britain’s most famous newsreader, ended up resigning from his £439,000-a-year-job at the BBC in April this year because of ‘medical advice’ from his doctors.

The news anchor, who broke the news of Queen Elizbaeth II’s death and  presented coverage of most major national events including elections and the Coronation, has been off our screens since last July.

Edwards has never publicly commented in the nine months since he was suspended. And the BBC made no mention of allegations he sent more than £35,000 to a teenager in return for sexually explicit photographs when they announced he had resigned.

Schofield, meanwhile, bowed out of the spotlight after his affair scandal last May, which led to his departure from This Morning after over 20 years on the show.

After much speculation about his private life, his affair finally went public and he admitted he had been left ‘broken and ashamed’ but insisted he was not a groomer.

He said the affair ‘never came across’ as an abuse of power because he and his lover were ‘mates’. 

He told The Sun at the time: ‘I was unprofessional, one time, in a 41-year career. There is no excuse. No one did anything wrong apart from me.’

In his first interview since leaving the broadcaster and This Morning, the 61-year-old presenter said: ‘I did not, I did not [groom him].

‘There are accusations of all sorts of things. It never came across that way because we’d become mates. I don’t know about that. But of course I understand that there will be a massive judgment, but bearing in mind, I have never exercised that.’

While reaction to the episode, and writer Steven Moffat’s script, was mixed, fans were full of praise for star Karen Gillan, describing her performance as ‘tremendous’

There had been a guessing game of sorts over which real-life star inspired the cancel culture comedy, after its writer Steven Moffat refused to reveal their identity 

He was subsequently dumped by YMU, the fearsome agency that had represented him for more than 25 years.

YMU counts Ant and Dec, Claudia Winkleman and Davina McCall among its clients — and is often described as the real power behind ITV. 

His exit saw him dropped from the British Soap Awards and Dancing on Ice, while the Prince’s Trust also ended their partnership with the once loved presenter. 

The scandal also destroyed his relationship with his co-star Holly Willoughby, who left This Morning last October ‘for the sake of her family’ after discovering she was the target of a foiled kidnap and murder plot.

In 2022 both had also faced criticism over claims they skipped the queue for the late Queen’s lying-in-state while attending as members of the media to film a segment for This Morning. 

Moffat was finishing the first draft of Douglas Is Cancelled in 2017, when the #MeToo movement started gathering momentum. It was originally being planned for the stage, but was shifted to the screen thanks to Karen Gillan.

While working on another play, The Unfriended (2022), Moffat decided to add more characters and split the it up into episodes rather than one film.

Ahead of the miniseries’ first episode, there had been a guessing game of sorts over which real-life star inspired the cancel culture comedy, after Moffat refused to reveal their identity.

While the main character, Douglas is fictional, Moffat said his idea for the series came from a story about ‘a person who I will not divulge’.

Referring to the real-life character who inspired the comedy drama, Moffat told the Royal Television Society Magazine: ‘It’s not the main part of the plot, but he was caught misbehaving and thought it might come up in an interview, so he had to have a rehearsal interview with a junior colleague.

‘I was fascinated with the idea of how on earth that would work.’  

Moffat is one of Britain’s best-known screenwriters, with hits including Doctor Who and Sherlock.

In another interview promoting his new ITV show, he said the topic of cancel culture was worthy of dramatic attention.

‘We’re outraged when someone who thinks the way we do is cancelled, but we’re perfectly happy to cancel someone else,’ he told The Sunday Times.

‘But cancellation only works on people who are capable of shame and wish to be well thought of. In other words, it only really works on quite good people.

‘It’s a smart bomb that can only take out people who at least aspire to virtue: you can’t cancel Hitler, you can’t cancel Donald Trump — you can’t, and they won’t care.

‘What is the point in a smart bomb that only afflicts and affects the civilised?’

Moffat previously revealed that viewers wouldn’t know what Douglas actually said until the end of the series, letting them make up their own minds on whether he should have been cancelled or not.