Cunk on Earth
Philomena Cunk Diane Morgan
Director Christian Watt
Series Producer Sam Ward
Writers Charlie Brooker, Michael Odewale, Eli Goldstone, Ben Caudell, Jason Hazeley, Joel Morris
Production Company Broke and Bones Ltd
Philomena Cunk is the smartest woman in the UK who isn’t the Prime Minister.
That’s a hard truth, but it needed to be said.
Cunk, for those unfamiliar with the character, is one of those slack-jawed philosophers who wanders around wondering such things as “Why is there air?” and “Do fish drink?”
Diane Morgan’s character is an invention of the brilliant and probably unstable Charlie Brooker (Weekly Wipe, Black Mirror, A Touch of Cloth) who needed someone who could be the equivalent of Rowan and Martin’s Goldie Hawn. Someone who would say utterly witless and simultaneously disturbingly profound things, often apropos of nothing. Diane Morgan was a brilliant choice to fill the spot, and like Hawn, became a sensation.
Morgan likes the role, partly because it’s so easy playing an idiot. She just puts on the jacket and lets her face go slack.
Brooker moved on to other things, but Philomena Cunk’s following kept growing, as did Morgan’s career. She has hosted a half dozen mockumentary series, including the most recent, Cunk on Earth. I’ll leave it to the viewer to determine if she is, in fact, on Earth, or anywhere near it.
While her narratives are mostly scripted, most notably by Brooker himself, the interviews are entirely spontaneous, and reminiscent of the interviews that used to occur on the old Jon Stewart Daily Show. One important difference: the interviewees are some of the world’s leading academics, who understand the schtick and play along. That wasn’t always true of the Daily Show victims, some of the dumbest people in America, with hilarious results.
An example might be Philomena interviewing Jim Al-Khalili, who is one of Britain’s top physicists, a television documentarian, and an author. She would be entirely capable of interrupting an answer about the nature of dark energy to ask, “If your name is Al-Khalili, why does everyone call you Jim?”
The magic of Cunk is her ability to reveal that the line between the sophisticated and the sublime and the abjectly idiotic is much thinner than most of us would care to acknowledge.
She said in an interview once that as a child, she worshiped the legendary and tragic English comedian Tony Hancock. I think her Philomena Cunk character would have fit right in with Sid, Hattie, Tony and the rest and been a splendid addition.
Morgan has her own show on BBC2, Mandy, and a major role in After Life with Ricky Gervais.
Now on Netflix and of course, the BBC.
Below is a sample of Cunk quotes, curated by Mark Butler.
“Why do we cry when it’s the onions that are getting hurt?”
“Hello science man. What are you an expert on?”
“Money. People fight for it. Die for it. And put it in china pigs.”
“Medicine means we can treat everything from made-up diseases like the plague, to modern epidemics like allegic-ness to bread.”
“Why can’t we get medicine crisps? Because no one likes needles.”
“If we keep discussing climate change at such an alarming rate, scientists predict the world’s stock of weather footage will be exhausted by 2050.”
“How does weather actually work? And if you can make it snappy – ‘cos this is going to be on iPlayer.”
Cunk on Michelangelo’s David: “It’s easy to see how these fearsome and almighty genitals convinced generations of men that they were superior.” Cunk was first to notice the famous statue does not possess an anus.
“One in 20 people have been a victim of crime, which means that 19 out of 20 people are criminals. No wonder we need police.”
“Are we looking at the computers, or are the computers looking at us? The answer to that question is obvious. But it sounds spooky.”
“The Origin of Species was the biggest sensation of its age, thanks to the twist ending, in which Darwin revealed everyone had been made from monkey meat all along.”
“What did people do, before evolution?”
“The monkeys that didn’t turn into humans must have been gutted…”
“Coals is a fossil fuel. Which means setting fire to dinosaurs.”
[On Donald Trump]: “There’s this amazing stuff on his head. It’s not hair – it’s like a sort of furry gas.”
“It’s exciting watching Trump’s rallies knowing that in 20 years’ time the footage will be on documentaries with ominous music in the background. And here’s me watching it live.”
“If Churchill was around today, imagine how good his tweets would have been.”
“You can still act without being posh. My mate Paul pretended to be in a neck brace for six months to get money from a car insurance company.”