This Morning: When will we stop buying into the shaky facade that is TV land?

If you had told me at the start of this year that some of our most defiant and rousing speeches would have come from the This Morning sofa, I would have barely believed it. As far as the oratory goes, it is more on the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair or Richard Nixon ‘I am not a crook’ scale of conviction however.

But what exactly was ever authentic about this programme?

That sofa, once exclusively the domain of celebrity tittle-tattle, has instead become the last battleground in a war to defend the identity of daytime TV.

First, there was Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond’s semi-obituary to departing presenter Phillip Schofield on 22 May’s programme, which lasted all of a few seconds despite the former presenter’s 21-year reign. And via an uncomfortable interview from a repentant but deeply troubled Schofield with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, two weeks later it was time for Holly to have her say.

Schofegate, as some have already coined it, has captured the front pages and bulletin headlines for weeks now, throwing the very authenticity of This Morning into question. People are rightfully troubled by the many grey lines that Schofield’s relationship with a younger member of staff raises, and an external investigation into what exactly occurred and who knew what is essential to restore ITV’s reputation on safeguarding.

But what exactly was ever authentic about this programme?

Only four years ago, the host of the preceding slot on ITV, Lorraine Kelly, had her lawyers successfully argue that Kelly’s on-screen persona was in fact a character in order to get her out of paying a sizeable tax bill. The staggering case back in 2019 saw Judge Jennifer Dean rule that the ‘friendly, chatty and fun personality’ that is the Lorraine Kelly on air between 9am and 10am on weekdays is in fact not the real Kelly at all, a devastating revelation for all concerned. Or what about the following year, when another seemingly untouchable and much-loved TV show stateside, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, collapsed in a heap of allegations about harassment and toxic work cultures? Just over a year after the story circulated, the curtain was closed on the programme after 19 years of broadcasting.

The carefully constructed contract it enjoys with its audience has broken

It seems remarkable to me that we remain shocked when the shaky facades of these TV projects are exposed time and again. Deceit and impropriety may be one thing, but as viewers, is it not time to reassess the level of trust we place in what are essentially TV characters portrayed to us? Perhaps it is because television has ascended to a quasi-religious standing in modern society, as Matthew Syed artfully argued in 4 June’s Sunday Times, that these fall-from-grace stories produce such a reaction. The reason This Morning flails in such crisis-coated flames is because the carefully constructed contract it enjoys with its audience has broken. No wonder presenter Willoughby’s first words to viewers on 5 June were ‘Firstly, are you OK?’

People, rightly or wrongly, bought into the idea that Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby were a loved-up pair of TV spouses until it became clear they, well, weren’t. How the programme gets out of this hole now will be fascinating. Will it, like Ellen or its former ITV counterpart Jeremy Kyle Show, continue to dig a hole for itself until it is all just too much? Or could it make a remarkable comeback, reinvigorated with a sofa change and perhaps reformed with a shake-up to behind-the-scenes personnel and atmosphere?

Who knows, frankly. For this embattled ITV outfit remains a galling appearance at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) select committee on 14 June, where chief executive Carolyn McCall faces questioning over the affair and the corporation’s handling of it. Either way, British audiences would be wise to never again hold a programme on such a pedestal that the exposing of its brittle humanity remains a shock.