One of the most brilliant comic creations of recent years is finally returning to our screens. Philomena Cunk uttered her first impossibly daft question on Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe before exploring the farthest frontiers of complete idiocy in a series of specials and miniseries, including Cunk on Christmas, Cunk on Britain, and Cunk and Other Humans. Now the world’s worst interviewer is back with Cunk on Earth, now streaming on Sky Go.
As played by a superbly straight-faced Diane Morgan, Philomena Cunk is a devastatingly funny figure. Not a million miles away from Karl Pilkington in An Idiot Abroad or Garry McDonald’s Norman Gunston (if your memory goes back that far), Cunk’s whole bit is that she is stupid. Incredibly stupid. The sort of stupid that registers on the Richter Scale, that warps reality around it to conform to its own stupid, stupid, world view.
Cunk on Earth, we’re told, is wildly ambitious, telling “…the entire story of Human Civilisation from prehistoric times to the present day, covering all the main bits of History, Science, Culture and Religion.” Along the way she takes us into some of the world’s most renowned civilisations and cultures, including “…the easier ones to spell like Rome and Greece, to the ones that are harder to spell, like Egypt and Mesopotamia.”
So yeah, it’s a bit like that.
Much like Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, Cunk interviews real people—actual academics and experts on history, philosophy, and archaeology, and you have to wonder whether or not they’re in on the joke or are just used to fielding dumb questions from TV talking heads (the Cunk Paradox is that she is both ridiculously dumb and incredibly close to the real thing). If they are in on it, their ability to play it straight is the sort of steely resolve that professional poker players envy. Witness the controlled chaos for yourself on Sky Go.
