James Reviews 'Take My Tumor' on Really, Douglas is Cancelled on ITV1, and Ghislaine Maxwell: The Making of a Monster on Channel 4

Hello, I’m James Brook, and welcome to the twenty-forth episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’ 

This is where I review upcoming Freeview programs. Go to IReviewFreeview.com to search, listen, or indeed read and/or comment on all my reviews. And if you want to see what I’ll be reviewing next time, visit the page ‘What’s up next.’ That’s IReviewFreeview - all one word - dot com.

In this episode, I will review: 

Take My Tumor (S 1 Ep 1: The Woman Covered in Thousands of Tumors) on Really

Douglas is Cancelled on ITV1, and

Ghislaine Maxwell: The Making of a Monster (S1 eps 1 - 3) on Channel 4 

A bit of a smorgasbord this time, or perhaps a mixed salad with added sausage, ice-cream and red flavoured jelly. There is a woman whose skin is covered in what looks like swelling blisters, or small balloons. It’s hard to describe without tending to voyeurism. Plus what I think is a sitcom hopefully with at least one laugh-aloud moment and a 3 hour mini-binge covering one of the more sordid stories of our time.

By the way, the image for this episode was generated by a free AI image generator with the prompt:

a woman with short dark hair is texting while behind her a surgeon operates and a TV shows a news program.

Once again, the image is OK(ish) but I’ve spent a good hour trying different prompts and experience has taught you never can get it quite right, so it’ll have to do.

Must press on:

Take My Tumor (S 1 Ep 1: The Woman Covered in Thousands of Tumors) on Really, Wednesday June 26, 10:00pm 

I watched this because I couldn’t believe the images. 

Charmaine, from Trinidad, is covered, absolutely covered, in lumps. Small and large sacks bulging out or hanging off every area of her skin. Almost without count. They surround her eyes and invade her nose. One the size of a large marble - that she has named Frank - is on her lip, sometimes inside her mouth, sometimes out.

She has trouble seeing, breathing and eating.

And, on her leg, dangling there, a large, loaf sized tumour. Charmaine hobbles rather than walks, and needs help to even do that.

Her condition is neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder. If one parent has it, there’s a 50% chance a child will have it as well.

She has two sons and a delightful granddaughter. Right now, they seem OK.

She has made video contact with Dr. Osborne, a surgeon in Los Angeles, who says he can help. So, with her best friend and a son, she sets off. People stare, look away, stare again. Charmaine is used to this.

This is - quite literally - a warts and all medical reality program. A tough documentary to watch. At the back of my mind is the constant thought, how does she stand it? Could I stand it? Time was, a large pimple on the nose would make me reluctant to go out.

In L.A. the hotel receptionist studiously avoids staring. They ascend to the 6th floor. Charmaine flops down on the bed, declaring it comfortable.

Dr. Osborne is smart, well turned out. He shines a light up her nose, asks her to stick her tongue out: it’s pink and unblemished. The bulges are all on the surface. He finds a few hiding in her hair.

He says he can remove them. How many and how fast will depend on how much pain she can stand, for each removal will take away skin. He’s very direct and very clear: it’s like flaying you alive, he says.

Tomorrow they’ll start slowly and see how it goes. In the hotel, knowing it’s going to happen, they all well up with tears. And I find I am weeping too. I so want it to go well.

The son is warned it’ll be a long day and left in the waiting room. He is on his own: best friend has had to go back home. A long way for a short stay. 

In surgery, they’d like to give Charmaine a general anaesthetic, but with all the bulges, they can’t find a vein. Nor can they sensibly use a face mask: again the bulges get in the way.

So, they decide to clear a patch using a local anaesthetic. They do this and it’s OK, so they just keep going. Bulge after bulge is removed. From around the eyes and nose. And ‘say goodbye to Frank!’ says the doctor, as Frank is snipped off and consigned to the reject tray, where the removed tumours are lined up like small potatoes of various sizes.

The hours tick by. Things are going well. It’s become almost agricultural. They decide to go for the large one on her leg. They slice and stitch, slice and stitch. When done, it takes two hands to place the massive tumour into a bucket.

This first time, they work on her for over 13 hours. The next day she can see better, breath better and Frank no longer hinders her eating. 

But they haven’t finished. Over the next 10 weeks she has 24 sessions, totalling 60 hours in surgery.

She will never have smooth, clear skin. Her face will always look patched up and lumpy. People will undoubtedly stare, but possibly only once and not for so long. She can play outside with her granddaughter, pushing her around on her little ride on car. 

Her life has been transformed.

I find I cannot be snide about this. I cannot manufacture caustic comedy from such a story. The program is factual, non-judgemental and non-sensationalist, so there’s nothing I can grip.

So all I can do is say: watch this, and you won’t moan about your pimples ever again.

And now …

Douglas is Cancelled on ITV1, Thursday 27 June, 9:00pm

I decided to review this on the strength of a trailer I watched when half-asleep. It seemed fun, not particularly taxing and starred someone I’d actually heard of.

So I assumed it would be a comedy about a small cog lost in a kafkaesque nightmare of rancid social media. Maybe 6 30 minute episodes, something like that. At best a couple of laughs, maybe throw in a groan or two. A kind of unholy son of a Richard Briars comedy and a rejected script for one foot in the grave. 

Hardly likely to be something to put on series record.

Well, I was wrong. As usual, I should have been paying more attention. It’s a comedy drama stretched over four one-hour episodes, and if the remaining 3 are as scintillating as the first, well worth watching.

The plot is fairly straightforward: someone tweets that Douglas, a co-host on a daily TV news program, has made a sexist joke at a wedding. This spreads like wildfire in the dry tinder of the social media forest, engulfing everything in its path, even though no-one - not even Douglas, who was drunk at the time - knows what the actual joke was.

Douglas is played by Hugh Bonneville channelling his best bewildered hampster driving a tractor look, while Karen Gillan - as Madeline his co-presenter - is a cross between imperious head girl and a refugee from Victoria’s secrets.

It is Madeline - of course - who retweets the tweet - under the guise of saying this is rubbish - to her 2+ million followers, causing it to go global.

It soon becomes apparent the entire world starts and stops with Madeline. Even Douglas’s agent - a furtive, slimy food pinching Simon Russel Beal - wants Douglas to get her to sign a raunchy photo: ‘For my son,’ he explains: ‘it’s his favourite image, he’s got it on his underpants.’ 

Douglas’s wife is Sheila - a most excellent Alex Kingston perpetually on the point of explosion. She’s the editor of (probably) a downmarket magazine of some kind, and is the only one who seems to have a real grasp of the situation. She warns him: ‘be careful of texting. I know people who hack your phone.’

Which leads me to think ‘Douglas is cancelled’ is a fine example of the difference between a comedy drama and a sitcom with an audience. In ‘Douglas’ the conversations are peppered with wit and one liners, but they are folded seamlessly in without undue impact, giving the impression of flowing normality. Whereas in a sitcom there’s always the requirement to build towards a punchline and a pause (for the laugh) when it happens. So the actual scripted structure of a conversation is different.

I thought I’d just put that out there.

Back to the program.

There is a blatant pinch from real life when Douglas’s boss - desperate to get ahead of the news by inventing a joke sexist enough to have caused an uproar, but - when known - is so bland the uproar collapses, has a chat with someone he assumes is a gag writer but turns out to be his driver for the last 9 years. ‘You look different from the back,’ he mumbles.

Douglas’s 19 year old daughter, Claudia, fetchingly tells Douglas ‘I don’t want to cancel you Dad.’

(huh)

Time to ‘fess up. I don’t use Twitter (or X or whatever) I don’t know anyone who does. I know of people that use it because they keep talking about it on TV, and it’s mentioned, as in ‘you can follow us on twitter.’ 

I know about retweeting because it’s self-explanatory and frequently mentioned in programs like ‘Douglas is cancelled.’

But Twitter - X - whatever - and facebook, instagram, tik tok, readit, urm .. and other things like that - Social Media - exist in a kind of separate universe, to one side of my world. I do what I do, it does what it does and we overlap but rarely.

So being cancelled means nothing to me and, by extension, I find it hard to believe it would matter to anyone else. I can understand it’s the social media equivalent of being taken by tumbril to the guillotine and having your head chopped off, but who cares? Not me.

So when Douglas has an attack of the vapours at the idea, my initial response is oh, so what? Ignore it and get on with things, you silly man.

But of course they can’t do that. It’s TV. The players have been introduced, the plot is in motion, and Douglas has gone in to confront Madeline!

(der - da - der)

What a cliff hanger!

To sum up: the script is witty, the characters well defined and excellently acted and the direction must be stonkingly good because you don’t notice it’s being directed at all.

I just wish I cared more.

Have I got it on series record? Yes, I have. Fingers crossed. But if I take it off I’ll let you know in my occasional segment - last occupied by Dr Who - of ‘programs no longer on series record because they didn’t live up to expectations'.’ Or something like that.

Onwards!

Ghislaine Maxwell: The Making of a Monster (S1 eps 1 - 3) on Channel 4, Thursday June 27 11:05 pm 

To start, a note about pronunciation. To read it, you’d think you’d say her name as ‘Ghislaine’ - G H I S L A I N E - but it’s usually pronounced ‘Gilliane’ so both the ‘H’ and ‘S’ are - like the ‘P’ in bathing, silent. 

(Boom Boom)

Anyway, to go back a tad, I have learnt several things since starting this podcast. The necessity, for instance, to write ‘UP’ in large letters on a piece of paper, along with an arrow, and put it somewhere near the microphone as a reminder to vary my voice and prevent it from becoming a monotonous, boring dirge.

I have also - to my surprise - found the worse the TV experience, the easier - and the more fun - the review is to write. The vocabulary of scorn seems greater than that of appreciation. Or perhaps I’m just a mean old bastard who enjoys sticking the verbal knife in.

So I was rather hoping the three one-hour documentaries ‘Ghislaine Maxwell: The Making of a Monster’ on channel 4 would fall into the absolutely stonkingly rubbish category.

But they don’t. They tell a compelling narrative, and tell it well, adroitly stepping thru her life with the aid of a range of former friends, business partners and acquaintances. There is no commentary, which is a great plus. It’s real people saying what they know and how they were involved. 

Nor is there an ‘expert’ in sight, which is another plus. Although it must have been very, very tempting to bring in some kind of psychiatrist to explore the obvious link between the death of her dominant and fraudulent super-rich father and her subsequent segway into the super-rich world of the possibly fraudulent but undoubtedly seedy financier Jeffery Epstein.

But they didn’t, and kudos for that. However, without an expert or two to provide some kind of balance, it meant the narrative drive was always in one direction. Indeed, the subtitle: ‘the making of a monster’ rather gives the game away.

There were three hour long episodes which mapped easily onto the three main strands of the story: up to her father’s death, when she was 29; her involvement with Epstein and finally her own trial, conviction and incarceration for abuse and sex trafficking.

I sat down and watched all three. Bing bang bong: a depressing mini binge-watch.

She was a Christmas day baby. Home movie footage show a little girl blowing out candles and generally doing festive stuff, before moving swiftly onto her time at Balliol college, Oxford, attending on a scholarship endowed by her father. Oh, how the rich look after their own. (Ha!) If only I had the means!

She was the queen bee at Oxford, excellent at all things social and being the centre of attention. People remembered her as beautiful, engaging and charming. A tutor recalled she once wrote a half-page essay when he’d been expecting 7 or 8, but she got her degree and went off to work for her Dad in various capacities.

Bright, beautiful, smart, rich .. what could go wrong?

(pooof!)

Well, her Dad died. In mysterious circumstances, going overboard from his luxury yacht, called ‘The Lady Ghislaine’ would you believe? Complete with the silent ‘H’ and ‘S’. Pick the bones out of that if you can. 

And then his business empire collapsed amid allegations of extensive fraud. 

So Ghislaine moved from being a London socialite to New York, where she was described by one of her more sympathetic acquaintances as broken and lost. 

So: broken, beautiful, lost, rich? In NYC? Ha! It sounds like the beginning of yet another romcom.

But this was not fiction, and certainly not comic. Enter Jeffery Epstein. Very rich, although no-one seemed to know how he made his money. Despots were mentioned. But it was common knowledge he liked young girls. But there is young and young.

Maxwell and he became close. We see pictures of them together. Revealingly, she is usually looking at him, but he is not looking at her. Often he looks straight out, at the camera, a confiding, half-smile on face. Look at me, he seems to say: the ruler of the universe.

And we hear from the girls - now grown women - who were trafficked and abused by the unholy pair. Details, details. All slightly different, but all with the same arc. She would find them, she would groom them - sometimes over months - making the abnormal normal. Massage therapy. His feet. In your lap. Rotate his nipples while he pleasures himself.

Maxwell said Epstein needed three orgasms a day, and it was her job to supply the girls to make sure he got them. So she would go out in the limousine, around the time the high schools shut, handing her card to likely looking girls, exchanging numbers, all friendly and professional: a tantalising glimpse of being a model; a dream of luxury.

She described the girls she got for him as trash. 

Epstein bought a private Caribbean Island, Little St. James, and hired a couple to manage the place. 

They show us photographs of idyllic beaches, swimming pools and a stainless steel kitchen. Did they know exactly what was going on? They said no, but one thinks how easy and tempting it must have been to turn a blind eye to naked girls around the pool. 

It sounds so tawdry. But - thankfully - by focusing on people telling their stories, without dramatisation or embellishment, the program remained on this side of salacious voyeurism.

As the sad events unfold, more people emerge: the lawyer who represented the girls, describing how, on Little St. James, Epstein built a camp - complete with a golden dome - for sex trafficking and abuse, where he also hosted rich and powerful people. Prince Andrew - of course - was mentioned.

In the telling, the various phases of the story became entwined: the start of her trial in 2021 (when she was 59) abruptly refocussed on an earlier trial, of Epstein, in 2008, for abuse of minors and soliciting. He did a deal, pleading guilty to lesser charges, to spend a year in custody but under a program that allowed him outside for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.

Maxwell was not mentioned, although her name came up often in the witness statements.

It was described as a sweetheart deal.

Maxwell, having set up and heading a predatory pyramid of girls grooming girls, was jet-setting around the world. She started a foundation to clear up the oceans: we see her being applauded at conferences.

But, step by step, the blocks of justice were finally starting to slot into place.

Enter Virginia Giuffre, claiming she - while under age - was forced into having sex with Prince Andrew. There is a notorious photograph of him with an arm around her waist, with Maxwell smiling behind them.

(sigh)

I suppose I should mention Prince Andrew has always denied everything. But one wonders why he then paid an undisclosed sum (woo!) to settle the matter. Millions were mentioned. I suppose, when you’ve got that much money, ‘undisclosed sums’ can be peanuts.

But, like a rancid, putrid stain in a carpet, the truth kept surfacing. Abused girls were coming forward. 

Epstein was arrested and charged with abuse and sex trafficking. And then killed himself.

Maxwell went into hiding, eventually being found - somewhat appropriately - secluded in a mansion called ‘Tuckedaway’ in a forest.

She was arrested, charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 years in jail.

The program finished with a note that she intends to appeal. Of course she does. She has the money, the contacts and - one suspects - the need for a project. One has to keep busy.

(sigh)

But there is another, kinder narrative here. A variation of the deprived little rich girl, with a disgraceful father who gave her too much money and taught her that rules are for others. And then, when he went, she fell in with someone who seemed to prove the rules were for others.

Poor Ghislaine, a victim of bad parenting and a rubbish boyfriend. She had no chance.

(ha!)

Well, if that’s what you think, stick your brain in a jar and leave it on a shelf. After all, has she no agency?

She was 29 when her father died. She was an adult with brains, beauty and wealth. Rearrange the words ‘oyster’, ‘world’, ‘was’, ‘the’ and ‘her’.

She could have had a whole lifetime as a spoilt little rich girl, spending money, flaunting her wealth and being bad tempered with minions. I don’t think there are any laws against being rude.

Or she could have been - oh, I dunno - a secular saint of some kind. 

Drawn into it or not, she didn’t need to go down the path she did. She must have made a deliberate choice at some stage: a crossing of a probably blurred line, but even so, it was her choice.

Whatever. Anyway. 

She was born on Christmas day, 1961. So right now, while you listen to this, she’s 62 years old and in a locked cell measuring 6 by 8 feet. She could well be sharing.

Justice might have been delayed, but not, in the end, denied.

And that misquote from William Gladstone concludes the reviews for this episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’

Don’t forget, contact me via email to contact@ireviewfreeview.com or through the website Ireviewfreeview.com where you can also click on the page ‘What’s up next.’ to see what programs I’ll be reviewing next time.

Thank you for listening, and goodbye for now.