Douglas in Cancelled, on BritBox

Douglas Bellowes is supposed to be the one ruining lives, because he works in media. As far as the veteran TV presenter is concerned, he is the media. Wisely, the British apply the term “journalist” more sparingly, especially for television talking heads. His wife, Sheila, the editor of a bottom-feeding tabloid frankly does not deserve such a title either. However, they find the cancellation is on the other foot in writer-creator Steven Moffat’s four-part Douglas is Cancelled, which premieres tomorrow on BritBox.

The veteran’s TV host’s career is stronger than ever thanks to his on-air partnership with Madeline Crow. She happens to be a much younger woman—demographic facts that will become extremely significant. Then one day, Bellowes finds himself in the middle of a social media firestorm when a post accuses him of making misogynistic joke.

Was it really misogynistic, or was it merely sexist? Bellowes believes that is an important distinction, but he cannot judge for himself, because he was too drunk to remember what he might have said at that fateful wedding reception. Regardless, he knows he didn’t say it, whatever it might have been.

Unfortunately, Bellowes’ agent is completely useless, but his wife is intimately familiar with such scenarios, so she knows they always end badly. However, he can count on Crow’s support—or can he? Frankly, it is hard to tell, because her tweet supposedly defending him could be interpreted several ways.

Douglas is Cancelled is sort of like the Oleanna of cancel-culture. A lot of assumptions and interpretations change as Moffat alters viewers’ vantage points. Instead of choosing sides, the audience should just enjoy the carnage.

Bellowes is truly insufferable, but he is surrounded by mendacity, hypocrisy, and bile. To some extent, Moffat critiques online cancel culture, but even more so, he truly excoriates wokeness. There are no villains, per se, but Bellowes’ social justice warrior college student daughter Claudia is often pretty scary and always totally ridiculous. This brutally hilarious exchange with her father scathingly satirizes her extremism:

“Gay people are executed everywhere dad.”
“No they aren’t. Would you like a list of countries where they’re executed?”
“No”
“Why not?”
“Because its racist!”

Hugh Bonneville (a.k.a. Lord Granville) is perfectly cast as the pompous Bellowes. He does a great job both delivering punch lines and serving as the butt of jokes. Bonneville’s portrayal also makes it clear Bellowes is a twit, but not an idiot. You definitely pick up on his desperate drive to survive.

The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, on Apple

Historians are convinced the legend of highwayman Dick Turpin was significantly enhanced by sensationalistic writers (including Daniel Dafoe). He wasn’t even considered a Robin Hood-figure until his image was tweaked again for a late-1970s TV series. Arguably, that makes him fair game for any new revision, reboot, or re-conception that comes along. A new Turpin should still at least make sense or get laughs. The first does not apply to this spoof, but, unfortunately, the humor is often rather iffy in creators Claire Downes, Ian Jarvis, and Stuart Lane’s six-episode The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

Turpin is still the son of a village butcher, but instead of a life of crime, he aspires to be an artist or a designer. However, when the ruthless leader of the Essex Gang essentially kills himself through freak misadventure, Turpin gets the credit and thereby inherits leadership of the gang. The burly Little John-ish Moose Pleck immediately takes to Turpin, identifying a kindred metrosexual soul. The frustrated poet Honesty Barebone also immediately accepts Turpin, because he is an idiot. However, the most competent member of the gang, Nell Brazier resents Turpin for taking the leadership role she deserves—while simultaneously hating herself for being attracted to him.

Naturally, the Essex Gang quickly falls in the official Highwaymen standings, even though (or maybe because) they have an aspiring pamphlet scribe documenting their misadventures. Turpin also alienates Jonathan Wilde, the corrupt Thief-Taking General, by refusing to pay his hefty kickbacks. Instead of feeding them tips, Wilde is now determined to apprehend the Essex Gang. Left to his own devices, Turpin has a knack for picking the worst possible targets, like the “Unrobbable Coach,” a riff on England’s phantom coach lore, in episode two.

Episode four, “Curse of the Reddlehag,” also has a supernatural theme, in which Turpin unleashes chaos after he unwittingly releases a witch from her prison coach. Arguably, this is the funniest episode. Perhaps not coincidentally, Turpin gets the least screentime in this installment, thanks to the spell that turns him into a chicken.

Hugh Bonneville is aptly pompous as Wilde, but Tamsin Greig is even more fabulously villainous chewing the scenery as Lady Helen Gwinear, the leader of Wilde’s secret criminal society. Throughout the series, Ellie White probably gets the most laughs as Brazier, because she is the only one who regularly undercuts Turpin’s impractical dandy stylings and his complete lack of common sense. Everyone should be ripping on Turpin, but usually it is just her.

The Gold, on Paramount+

The Securitas cash depot heist remains the UK’s largest cash robbery in history. Showtime took that one on with the multi-part doc Catching Lightning. The Brinks-Mat heist was the largest gold score. If you own British jewelry crafted after the 1983 robbery, it is thought you most likely have some of the boosted bullion mixed into your bling. Obviously, it was a high-profile crime, but the investigation broke somewhat new ground pursuing those who fenced, smelted, laundered, and invested the illegal fruits of the crime. The investigation and pursuit of the guilty parties are solid grist for creator-writer Neil Forsyth’s six-part true crime drama The Gold, produced by the BBC, which premieres tomorrow on Paramount Plus.

Brian Boyce was a legend at Scotland Yard for his service in Northern Ireland. Initially, leading the Brinks-Mat special task force looks and feels like a demotion, but he soon realizes the case might encompass some of the corrupt elements within the Metropolitan Police he has long resented. Nicki Jennings and Tony Brightwell are not part of that clique, which is why Boyce keeps the “Flying Squad” members on the case.

Stumbling upon the bullion was a happy surprise for Micky McAvoy and his accomplices, but they were not prepared to move it. Fortunately, he knew Kenneth Noye and John Palmer, dodgy gold dealers with a long history of criminal associations, who developed a method to smelt off the serial numbers and create a fraudulent paper trail, to sell the gold back into the market.

Noye also has a few semi-secret allies. He happens to be a Freemason, as is Neville Carter, a highly placed cop in Metropolitan HQ. Thanks to their uniformed brothers, Noye has been able to operate with impunity throughout his career. Carter is also a link to fellow freemason Edwyn Cooper, a social-climbing lawyer, who married into an impeccable establishment family. Cooper will set up the shell companies, the Swiss accounts, and the real estate investments, but he will never directly touch any of the cash.

Everyone should be insulated from everything except their own link in the chain, which makes the case particularly frustrating for Boyce’s honest cops to investigate, especially with the UK’s minimal early 1980s bank reporting regulations. That makes the step-by-step detective work to reveal the conspiracy so fascinating.

However, that Freemasonry business is no joke. At one point Boyce literally calls the Freemasons within the Metropolitan force the “hidden hand.” It all sounds very weird, almost like the Birchers discussing the Council on Foreign Relations. Yet, apparently, this somewhat resonates in the UK. In the late 1990s, Labour Home Secretary led a movement to force Freemasons to disclose their membership before when up for judicial or police appointments.

Despite the conspiratorial tone, the procedural elements are highly compelling. Regardless of who belonged to what lodge, the major developments of the case largely follow the historical record, including all the criminal trials depicted.

Monuments Men: The Best and the Brightest of the Greatest Generation

They were the elite of America’s elite, but they readily answered the call to serve. Recruited for their knowledge of art and architecture, this special corps was tasked with preserving important cultural landmarks and restituting plundered artwork, despite having no real operational authority. The nearly 345 men and a handful of women who served in the Allied armies’ Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) program are boiled down to eight cultured but courageous souls in George Clooney’s The Monuments Men (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

Even today, the scale of the National Socialist war machine’s systematic looting boggles the mind. Old masters were eagerly sought to fill Hitler’s Fuhrermuseum, a grandiose monstrosity planned for his hometown of Linz, while art deemed “degenerate” was destroyed. Alarmed by the threat to Europe’s artistic legacy, Frank Stokes (modeled after George Stout) is given the go-ahead to form the Monuments Men. Like a Harvard-educated Billy Ocean, he proceeds to recruit a clean half-dozen, including James Granger, the Met’s curator of medieval art (based on James Rorimer), sculptor Walter Garfield (strongly suggestive of Walker Hancock), and ballet impresario Preston Savitz (transparently inspired by one of the best known Monuments Man, Lincoln Kirstein).

Initially, Stokes mostly encounters hostility from his fellow officers, who understandably place the safety of their men far above that of a few statues or a pretty fountain. However, with the help Sam Epstein (based on Harry Ettlinger, one of the last surviving Monuments Men), a German-speaking Jewish immigrant enlisted man, Stokes’ men start developing leads on the National Socialists’ vast caches of stolen art. Nevertheless, even though the military tide has turned in the Allies’ favor, the clock is ticking furiously for the Monuments Men. Retreating Nazi forces have been instructed to destroy the secret art stashes, as part of the infamous Nero Decree. Making matters more complicated, the Soviets also deployed so-called Trophy Brigades on a mission to re-plunder art looted by the National Socialists as supposed “war reparations.”

To their credit, Clooney and co-screenwriter-co-producer Grant Heslov (adapting Robert Edsel’s nonfiction book) make the distinction between the Monuments Men and the Trophy Brigades as clear as day and night. They consistently honor the sacrifices made by the Monuments Men, getting genuinely patriotic down the stretch. In a big picture sense, the film does right by its heroic subjects.  However, it gets rather bogged down in a draggy midsection, wherein the Magnificent Seven plus Epstein split up for a series largely unnecessary misadventures. Still, the third act picks up the tempo quite nicely.

Stokes/Stout is a perfect vehicle for the smooth-on-the-outside, deep-on-the-inside screen persona Clooney has developed over the years. We can easily believe he is both a learned scholar and officer material. John Goodman, Bill Murray, and Bob Balaban just sort of do their shtick as Garfield/Hancock, architect Richard Campbell, and Savitz/Kirstein, but Downton’s Hugh Bonneville gives the film unexpected heft and tragic dignity as Donald Jeffries, an art world cad seeking redemption.

Anyone interested in the Monuments Men and the National Socialist campaign of pillage should watch Berge, Newnham & Cohen’s The Rape of Europa, which is easily one of the best documentaries of the last ten years. Clooney dramatizes their story well enough, but just barely legs out a double rather than knocking it out of the park. Still, for those looking for a stirring war story with a dash of American exceptionalism, it is the only game in town this week. Recommended as a serious but reasonably entertaining WWII film, Monuments Man opens in wide release today (2/7), including the AMC Empire in New York.

Mr. Stink: No, He’s not French

For their first 3D special, the BBC chose to adapt David Walliams’ mildly gross children’s book.  They should have made it in Smell-O-Vision.  Perhaps more importantly, it stars Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville, which is probably why PBS will also broadcast Declan Lowney’s Mr. Stink (promo here) this Sunday on most affiliates nationwide.

He is not called Mr. Stink for nothing.  The ill-tempered vagrant is not big on hygiene.  He does not think much of kids either, yet he somehow befriends twelve year old Chloe Crumb, a social outcast in the John Hughes tradition.  Shunned at school, Crumb also feels increasingly alienated from her mother Caroline, a neophyte candidate in an important by-election, who serves as a shrill caricature of all things not properly progressive.  Intrigued by his mysterious origins and duly impressed by his power to control huge plumes of stench, Chloe offers Mr. Stink temporary shelter in their back shed.

Of course, Cruella Crumb cannot discover Mr. Stink, which pretty much guarantees she will, at the most inopportune moment.  In fact, his discovery will have political repercussions reaching all the way to Downing Street.  Yes, Mr. Stink is another show that believes the world would be a better place if heads of state just took the advice of tramps sleeping in the park.  Granted, there are millions of people due to lose their health insurance who probably think we would be better off with any randomly selected derelict, but that’s a different matter entirely.

Frankly, the BBC’s Julia Donaldson animated specials (such as the Oscar shortlisted Room on the Broom) are a lot more fun than Stink.  Still, Bonneville (a.k.a. Lord Grantham) develops some pleasant screen chemistry with the reasonably down-to-earth and grounded Nell Tiger Free as Crumb.  Younger viewers will probably focus on Stink’s pooch, The Duchess, doggedly portrayed by the game Pudsey.  At least she is not of those annoying screen pets who constantly mug for the camera, so yes, you can say the dog gives a performance of mature restraint.  The same cannot be said for Sheridan Smith and the author, who shtick up the joint as Caroline Crumb and the PM, respectively.

To be fair, there are a handful of witty lines in Stink, but the major plots points are corny clichés.  Bonneville and Smith can easily be seen in superior projects (like Downton and The Scapegoat), whereas the promising Free surely has better vehicles in her future.  Neither recommended nor truly despised (mostly just kind of meh), Mr. Stink airs on most PBS outlets tomorrow night (12/22), but Bonneville fans should just hold out for season four of Downton premiering on PBS January 5^th.