We watched the last two episodes of “Douglas Is Cancelled” on Britbox the other night, and never have I seen a series take such a dramatic and worthwhile turn. The show that starts out as a witty take on cancel culture becomes, after the halfway mark, a gripping drama about predatory men – and insensitive men who blithely accept the behavior of their predatory colleagues – in the workplace, in this case media. It’s also, winningly, about the strong women who stand up to them.
Last night I went on BritBox to watch the third episode of “Douglas Is Cancelled” and couldn’t find it anywhere. It was not there under “Continue Watching” – as it was a few nights ago – and it was not there under “Recently Added.” And I thought: Has “Douglas Is Cancelled” been cancelled?
Or, after yesterday’s post, have I been banned from it?
I’ve been looking forward to “Douglas Is Cancelled” (now on BritBox) since reading a glowing review of it in The Spectator last year. For one thing, nobody is killed in it, only cancelled. Plus, it seemed to address, as few shows do today, an important aspect of contemporary life. And to do it, as the review made clear, with great humor.
Watching the first episode, I occasionally laughed out loud. The writing is brilliant. (Husband to wife about their teenage daughter: “It’s like we’ve lost her to a cult.” Wife to husband: “We’ve lost her to a university, which is the same thing only you still have to do their laundry.”) But the characters seemed a little undeveloped, as if their sole purpose was to deliver great lines. The writing got in the way of the drama. I thought of "The White Lotus," where none of the characters utter witty lines but the show is full of understated humor and suspense.
Last night we watched the second episode, which was even more disappointing. The characters seemed to be caricatures, with fewer good lines and lot of exaggerated behavior. It’s still interesting, and better than a lot of things we stream, but not the modern classic I had hoped it would be.
The recent photo of Elon Musk standing in a cabinet meeting in T-shirt and ballcap brought back an unpleasant memory for me.
In the spring of 2008, I was summoned to the managing editor’s office to discuss a redesign of the Travel section, which I had been editor of for 18 years. The m.e. sat quietly at her desk while a ballcapped young man I had never seen before explained his plans for my section. These involved discontinuing long travel narratives – three of which had landed in The Best American Travel Writing anthologies – and diminishing my presence. My column, he noted blithely, would now appear below the fold and jump inside.
I had no idea who this man was. I wondered, naturally, about his background – his knowledge of travel writing, his experience of travel. I assumed they were slim, and that he had been given the job of remaking the section primarily because of his age and his presumed ability to connect with younger readers (an oxymoron even back then).
I sat mostly speechless, and with the sudden realization that the world had changed, at least in the newsroom, and that people like me were no longer welcome. A few months later, I was laid off.
We got home last night at 9:30, just in time to see my three favorite parts of the Academy Awards: Best Live Action Short, In Memoriam, and Best Foreign Film.
This meant that my surprise and outrage at an undeserving winner came before most people’s. I Am Not a Robot was, in my opinion, the weakest of this year’s shorts, a slight story that starts out with promise – a woman unsuccessfully clicking the “I am not a robot” box on her computer screen – and then fizzles into pointless absurdity.
I have not yet seen any of the foreign films that were nominated, though, because I love Iranian cinema, and know that The Seed of the Sacred Fig was filmed in secret in Tehran, with great risk to the cast and crew (many of whom now live abroad), I was pulling for it. But I was happy for the Brazilians.
I love seeing the dead remembered – CBS Sunday Morning now pays homage to the recently departed every week – and there’s something about seeing actors, pictured in their celebrated roles, that’s beautifully uplifting: the realization that, through their movies, they will live on. It is the evening's greatest demonstration of the magic of cinema.
I still go to the movies, and I always sit through the closing credits – unless I need to use the men's room (I’m looking at you, Oppenheimer). I like sitting there as the room slowly – or these days, quickly – empties and letting the power of the movie sink in. Roger Rosenblatt, back when he reviewed movies (I think for The New Republic) stated that one should never talk about the movie, or even express an opinion on it, until one gets outside the theater.
Last night I was rewarded watching the credits roll for A Complete Unknown, not just because they were accompanied by Timothée Chalamet singing “Blowing in the Wind,” but because, in a beautiful voice, the woman in front of me sang along with him.