Cunk on Earth
Cast & Key People
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Our Review
Diane Morgan’s Philomena Cunk is the dumbest smart woman on television, and this five part Netflix co production with the BBC is her masterpiece. Cunk on Earth sends the professional idiot through the whole of human civilization, from the Big Bang to what she insists on calling “the future”, asking experts questions no expert has ever been asked, like whether the pyramids had a gift shop and what Michelangelo’s problem was.
The joke never gets old because the experts are real. Actual historians and scientists keep straight faces while Cunk asks whether Jesus ever did standup, and their genuine confusion is the whole engine. Morgan commits so completely that sometimes you catch yourself wondering if she believes a word she is saying.
It is slight, it is five episodes, and the last one leans on the same beats as the first. But this is the funniest thing Netflix has put its name on in years, and the perfect gateway drug to the Cunk back catalogue on the BBC. Our score: 8/10. If you want to laugh tonight, this is the one.
