Run, don’t walk, to see Cunk On Earth, friends. It’s super fun.
Cunk On Earth is a easy-watching, ridiculous reimagination of the Sir David Attenborough-style documentary as told by a contemporary village idiot by the name of Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan).
It’s difficult to capture the precise type of cringe comedy on display in Cunk On Earth, because the show has a certain ‘throw it all at the wall and see what sticks’ type of shotgun methodology, but even as you wade through a litany of smirk-worthy gags, eventually something will clonk you in the funny bone. In the five episodes of Cunk On Earth, I found myself laughing out loud for every single one, and more often with the later offerings, after I had become more familiar — and more appreciative — of Morgan’s comedic banter.
Here’s one type, just straight up, bold-faced ignorance. All of the experts are college professors or lecturers from prestigious UK institutions who were directed to answer Cunk’s questions as if they weren’t utter palaver, and it works.
That’s just fucking stupid, in the best way.
The running gags are a blast, as Cunk will argue with world-class experts by citing the various, one-off experiences of her friends and family, as if the data set of one is a statistically viable counterpoint. It’s moronic and you just watch in wide-eyed amusement.
Cunk also seems to carry a torch for her ex-boyfriend Sean, whom she’s not quite over.
Here’s Cunk analyzing some of the greatest art in the world despite being an imbecile and rocking what appears to be a fifth grade education and understanding of art.
Some of the humor is just garish and vulgar, which honestly is my favorite kind. She wouldn’t let this poor professor dodge the question about whether the Romans ‘invented’ or ‘perfected’ anal bleaching, a practice he had never heard of at the time of filming.
Now, despite my insistence that Philomena Cunk is a dummy, she often makes sharp, insightful and/or prescient observations due to the simplicity of her thought process.
“The Greeks also invented a kind of theatre for stupid people, known as sport.”
There are oldfashioned physical gags all over the place. One shows her narrating as she walks down the side of what looks like a Saharan sand dune, but then she trips and rolls down the dune like a log. It’s preposterous.
There’s also a charming innocence to Philomena Cunk that feels so relatable. When she sees cave drawings for the first time, she thinks they’re shit.
When she introduces the ‘wheel’ and one of the greatest inventions in history, she calls it an ‘app’ and claims that it works by moving the entire earth away from you, thereby propelling you forward. And then there’s just playing against type, as in the interviewer who’s so blithely unprepared that she doesn’t even know who she’s interviewing.
And as sort of a cousin in spirit to the maturity of Beavis and Butthead, Cunk cannot stop commenting on penises whenever she looks at a nude statue. “Look at that todger.”
Ultimately, Philomena Cunk is a change agent, and a sneaky-good one at that. Her ability to extract the key bits of vanilla on any topic, thereby delivering a scathingly vicious commentary in her droll British monotone is captivating.
I could just post clip after clip after clip and some you’d love and others you’d just kind of smirk at, and that’s really the magic of Cunk on Earth: she employs so many types of comedy that you’re bound to have a laugh. And though you won’t actually learn anything factual, per se, you may be doubly tickled by the point of view of a 21st century woman just calling shit like she sees it.
