…………………………………………………

Cunk on Earth Review

Cunk on Earth is a British mockumentary television series produced by Charlie Brooker and starring Diane Morgan. It premiered in 2022.

………………………………………………….

“Sorry, that’s not a question.

It is just something I read on Twitter“

…………………………………………………..

Philomena Cunk travels around the world, interviewing real-life experts on history in this very funny series. This is such a clever, amusing parody of this type of edutainment television, particularly focusing on roasting the way these shows are made – the most hilarious bit was seeing Cunk walk around in every single scene. The fact that she never went everywhere as they used green screen was especially hilarious.

Diane Morgan is such a special comedian. She possesses a rare gift to make people laugh and not just in what she is saying, but also in her facial expressions that range from confounded to annoyed to bored. Couple these with her silly questions and you’ve got an adult woman who resembled a child in personality and behavior. It is so easy to forget that she isn’t a real person, which is due to superb characterization on display and the similarities that the character shares with the actress herself.

The bulk of the show consists of Cunk interviewing various real-life experts in the fields of history and anthropology. This structure definitely quickly got repetitive and some episodes are better than others. The show is also overly short with just five episodes in total. With that being said, most of them were excellent and they are worth seeing for Cunk alone.

There is a potent dynamic in these interviews of Cunk asking ridiculously childish, inconsequential questions out of the blue and these experts reacting awkwardly, but still retaining their professional demeanor as they would go to great lengths to explain the most obvious things possible to the poor clueless woman. Every single interview was amusing and some were downright hilarious while the walking scenes were also very amusing.

…………………………………………………..

Cunk on Earth goes through entire human history, but only touching on the most important events or figures. There was a clear Western bias here that plagued this series and when they tried to showcase other cultures and countries, they were either too negative or in the instance of Islam too positive in those depictions. This was to be expected from a British series, but it least it was mostly well edited and paced.