Reviewers have labelled Phillip Schofield’s television comeback as a “sea of self-pity” and the “biggest misjudgement since Prince Andrew”.
The first of the three-part series Cast Away aired on Channel 5 on Monday (September 30), in which the former This Morning presenter spends ten days trying to survive on his own on an island in the Indian Ocean.
Schofield, 62, resigned from ITV last year after admitting to an “unwise but not illegal” extramarital affair with a much younger man, and until this has kept a low public profile since the scandal broke.
With the reviews in for the opening episode, the reactions have not been kind. The Guardian giving the show two stars and saying it is hard to remember a show “as salivatingly anticipated”, but adding: “It’s one thing to fend for yourself in the middle of nowhere, quite another to do it without acting like the most bitter man ever to walk the Earth.”
The Times, meanwhile, have described the show as “a sea of self-pity”, while The Independent compared it unfavourably to I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here: “Here in this insular, low-rent man-vs-the-elements bout, Schofield still has to go hungry and defecate next to a tree, only without the giant ITV-sized pay cheque or the bantery chats with Ant and Dec.”
The Daily Mail said it “could be the biggest television misjudgement since Prince Andrew smiled across at Emily Maitlis and said, ‘That went well, didn’t it?’”.
On a similar theme, the Evening Standard noted that there is “no attempt at balance” in the show, “not even from the producers.”
Instead, they add, “this just reads as a desperate grab for public redemption. Queasy viewing, best avoided.”
Schofield announced the attempted comeback on his Instagram account last week. “Now you know how I spent my Summer!” he wrote. “Alone for 10 days, no food, no water, no crew. My story of survival, both on a desert island and off it. Cast Away starts Monday on @channel5_tv & My5 at 9pm.”
Even before it had aired, it caused controversy online, with some viewers labelling it “a fucking disgrace”.
The remaining two episodes of Cast Away air on Tuesday (October 1) and Wednesday (October 2).
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