Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon are terrific movies, but neither is a barrel of laughs. Sometimes it’s good to spend an evening watching a comedy. For decades doctors and therapists have advised that laughing is good for the soul.
Cunk on Earth, a British mockumentary mini-series available on Netflix, makes me laugh. Time and again, as I watched, I laughed out loud. The lead character, the fictional Philomena Cunk, is a serious-minded TV presenter who takes viewers through the history of the planet – from cavemen and their inventions of fire and the wheel to the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, then onto the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and eventually into more recent history.
With a straight face, deadpan, Cunk rattles on about the finest and most horrific people and moments in history. Much of what she says is hilarious, laugh-out-loud funny! Bless the writers for their marvelous wit and bless actress/writer Diane Morgan for her portrayal of Philomena Cunk. This isn’t the first time that Morgan has embodied the Cunk character. In past years she has starred in Cunk on Shakespeare, Cunk on Britain, and Cunk & Other Humans on 2019. I’ll be seeing those soon, I hope, because Cunk is the funniest character that I have encountered in months.
One technique of Cunk’s presentation is to interview real experts in historical fields, academicians and archeologists. Occasionally, they are sour-faced experts who look as though they want to end the interview soon. Apparently, these solemn folks have been warned that they are being interviewed by a comical character; they realize that they aren’t part of a truly serious documentary. Most play along effectively. The filming technique for those interviews is clever. Each time, Cunk and the expert are seen sitting in straightback chairs facing each other in an empty room. That composition really adds to the trumped-up gravity of the moment.
Cunk calls the pyramids the pointiest buildings in history and wonders whether they were built from the top down or ground up. She drones on about ancient Greece and then says, that Greece – the country not the musical, was the birthplace of civilization. Then she adds straight-faced, “Maybe I’m cold but I don’t give a shit [a bleep?] about people in ancient Greece.”
On ancient Rome Cunk confidenty states, “One of the reasons we know so much about ancient Romans today is Wikipedia.”
She rattles on about Alexander the Great and his feats, shows an image of him in battle gear with helmet, and then asks the eminent professor she is interviewing one important question, “What did his hair look like?” This remark had me on the floor howling because in the 1980s I actually had the task of prepping a famous performer about the life of silent film star Lillian Gish, and she only had one question for me, “Did Miss Gish ever cut her hair?” I swear!
Of Jesus Christ, Cunk ponders the fact that there are so many paintings of him during Medieval times. How did he have time to pose for all those paintings? Who scheduled for him?
Cunk on Earth is a real find. So much of the streaming that I do explores crime, international incidents, lost love, and other grim events. I relish a show that makes me laugh out loud. Cunk on Earth is a real hoot!
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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