Cunk on Earth review: Philomena Cunk isn’t as dumb as she looks

Cunk on Earth.

Greg and Zanna watch a show that’s more than just laugh-dense.

SCORES

Intentional stupidity: 5

Accidental profundity: 5

SHE SAW

The trailer for Cunk on Earth autoplayed when I turned on Netflix. Host Philomena Cunk was doing a piece to camera: “I’m entering a cave, not by mistake or because I’m a wolf but because I’ve been specifically asked to come here by the producers.” I concluded it was an unoriginal mockumentary that tiresomely acknowledges its own production, and turned on Ginny and Georgia.

Later, when Greg bounced into the living room like an excitable puppy and announced that we must watch Cunk on Earth because the internet was abuzz about it, I was neither enthusiastic nor nice. But egged on by his constant giggling, I quickly began to surrender to the ridiculousness of Philomena Cunk. Surrender is the right word I think. This show is very silly but if you allow it to be, it’s also very funny.

Cunk is a misinformed, dim-witted television journalist who finds history boring - the ideal candidate to host a documentary series on the history of humanity. Throughout the series, she interviews experts on everything from the pyramids to Mesopotamia to the moon landing. It’s similar to a Borat-style interview where the subject is essentially being pranked by the interviewer but it’s not nearly as uncomfortable as Sacha Baron Cohen’s interviews because Cunk isn’t trying to ridicule her subjects: she is the joke, not them.

Like all comedies of this nature, not every joke works. When she asks an historian, “What is the Soviet onion?” and continues to insist that it’s onion not union, there really isn’t anywhere to go with that joke. But there are many more hits than there are misses and woven in there is actually some biting social commentary. Cunk wades into some treacherous waters and I’m sure there are things people will find offensive but by and large the show is very right on.

Diane Morgan is the actor who plays Cunk and for this series, she sat down as Cunk for two-hour interviews with each of the experts. Most, but not all, know her character and are prepared for her outlandish questions, and they do an excellent job keeping a straight face and giving genuine, historically accurate, answers. Which is to say, you might incidentally learn something interesting from this series despite Cunk finding it all incredibly dull. Don’t take anything she says at face value though, she’s got quite a few wacky ideas from her friend Paul who has some pretty compelling evidence the moon isn’t real.

HE SAW

It seemed to come from nowhere, with no advance buzz, and suddenly it was all anyone could talk about, even the Americans – a genuine overnight sensation. But like most overnight sensations, it had been years in the making. British comedian Diane Morgan first played Philomena Cunk in the mid-2010s, when she appeared as a character on the BBC in Charlie Brooker’s funny TV review show Screenwipe. She went on to appear in many skits, to have a BBC show of her own – Cunk on Britain – and even to write a book, Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena.

It would be fascinating to see how funny Cunk still is for those who’ve been watching her for nearly a decade. There’s a rhythm to the jokes that can sometimes feel repetitive and they are so intense that sometimes you start to feel you need a break, particularly from the ongoing gag where she gets the names of things wrong. You must not allow this to put you off. Allow yourself the freedom to not feel obliged to laugh at everything and understand that a gag landing rate of 100 per cent is not the point. And besides, even with the landing rate down, the attempt rate is so high as to make it the most laugh-dense show in a generation.

Much of the show’s humour comes not from the gags but from the detail: the complex emotional states conveyed in her multitudinous reaction shots, the audacity of her complete absence of wardrobe changes, the cumulative overwhelm of her endless drivel, the development of the character of her friend Paul, whose bizarre life and terrible decision-making she reveals, story by agonising story, in her interviews with baffled academics. Even the selection of Technotronic’s Pump up the Jam as the recurring musical joke is masterful. You might not have ever thought of it as one of the funniest music videos of all time, but by the end of the show you’ll wonder why you didn’t. This is the show’s great strength: Turning the world slightly, so it’s revealed anew.

While the show is very funny, and exists primarily to be funny, it would not be as satisfying as it is without its ludicrously-earned insights into our world, including the nature of war, the mind, culture and democracy. Perhaps the most important revelation though is about great art, which, it turns out, sometimes comes in the most unexpected forms.

Cunk on Earth is streaming now on Netflix.