Desert island risks
Will Phillip Schofield’s documentary resurrect his career?
Channel 5
- Caroline Frost
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I never thought I’d say it, but after decades of helming bland, uninspiring TV, Phillip Schofield has finally made a show worth watching, albeit one of the can’t-look-away, peek-through-my-fingers variety.
His three-hour epic Cast Away – clearly a programme planned for optimal optics, with its post-Huw timing and messianic wilderness setting – is an inspired piece of commissioning by Channel 5, not usually known for its ability to tip a wink to the viewer and give us perfect zeitgeist satire. That’s surely what it is, right? A parody of a confessional, worthy of inclusion with the best of Ricky Gervais’s ruthless celebrity wound-scrape two decades ago in Extras.
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This Crusoe-meets-Partridge crusade sees the erstwhile prince of daytime TV delight in catching a fish, prove adept at lighting a fire and marvel at regular intervals, “I’m on my own,” seemingly unaware that lots of people (“the public” as he describes those of us without a dressing room with a star on the door) manage to travel overseas without a lackey to wheel their suitcase or apply a bit of powder. However, nobody was tuning in for Bear Grylls antics, but for Scofe to dish the dirt, and this he does, spectacularly and in spades.
Many have their moment in the starry sin bin, but who gets to return and who doesn’t?
Prize gems include this on the paparazzi: “Bugger off and let me get on with the quiet life that you’ve all given me,” he says on primetime telly, hoping for a couple of million viewers. “We’re here for such a brief space of time. What’s the point in not being happy, regardless…” Of what? His family, power imbalances in the TV industry, the hours others have been queueing to farewell Her Majesty? Then there’s, “I’ve been chucked under a bus, and I could drive the same bus over so many people, but I’m not that sort of person,” bypassing the fact that saying this out loud is proof that you very much are. And the corker, “I don’t want to do [daytime TV] any more,” implying that, in some universe, he thinks he has the choice. I like him best when he says, wryly, “Cancellation is a funny old thing,” (again, speaking on primetime TV!). And it does raise the wider question: with so many entertainers having their moment in the starry sin bin – what determines who gets to return and who doesn’t?
Cast Away with Phillip Schofield. ITV
Michael Barrymore was resident king of Saturday-night TV until his lifestyle turned people off, a man died at his home, and it was over. Jeremy Clarkson punched a producer. Ant McPartlin drunkenly crashed a car. Others sent inappropriate texts. The list goes on, and there’s no way of determining an objective judgement, somewhere between “redeemable” and “definitively dethroned”. Two other factors come into play: the public perception of contrition and, significantly, what the entertainer uniquely has to offer. Clarkson’s stock has never been higher. Barrymore’s talents weren’t enough to save him before, two decades later, Ant was restored to his Saturday-night duties thanks to his reliable wingman Dec, plus a highly publicised stint in rehab. In Cast Away Schofield says, “I did something unwise, but not illegal” and yet, in the same show, it’s clear that, stripped of his bright studio lights, after a jaw-dropping 41-year TV career, he’s not indispensable to the TV ecosystem. Still, four decades – not bad.
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Somewhere in this vat of vanity is an interesting documentary waiting to break out. In this era of sexual fluidity, his family’s pain is moving to learn, their support and love inspiring to see. And what he says about age gaps not being unusual in the gay world seems a door to a whole other conversation. Schofield tells us, over and over, that he’s done, which reminds me of those stars on the nostalgia music circuit: “Last tour, one night only.” Except, if enough people come, there’s always a miraculous extra concert date somewhere down the line. And, to be fair, in all his bitter brokenness, Phillip Schofield has finally become interesting.
Authors
Caroline Frost
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