Cunk On...
- TV comedy
- BBC Two
- 2016 - 2022
- 18 episodes (2 series)
Spin-off from Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe featuring Diane Morgan as Philomena Cunk.
Episode menu
Cunk On Britain, Episode 1 - Beginnings
Broadcast details
- Date
- Tuesday 3rd April 2018
- Time
- 10pm
- Channel
- BBC Two
- Length
- 30 minutes
Repeats
Show past repeats
Date | Time | Channel |
---|---|---|
Monday 18th February 2019 | 10:00pm | BBC2 |
Tuesday 6th July 2021 | 10:00pm | BBC2 |
Friday 24th March 2023 | 10:00pm | BBC2 |
Friday 24th March 2023 | 11:05pm | BBC2 Wales |
Thursday 30th March 2023 | 11:45pm | BBC2 Wales |
Cast & crew
Diane Morgan | Philomena Cunk |
Tom Holland | Self |
Ronald Hutton (as Professor Ronald Hutton) | Self |
Francis Pryor (as Professor Francis Pryor MBE) | Self |
Neil Oliver | Self |
Laura Ashe (as Dr. Laura Ashe) | Self |
Jessica Nelson (as Dr. Jessica Nelson) | Self |
Robert Peston | Self |
Vanessa Harding (as Professor Vanessa Harding) | Self |
Charlie Brooker | Writer |
Jason Hazeley | Writer |
Joel Morris | Writer |
Ben Caudell | Writer |
Lorry Powles | Director |
Alison Marlow (as Ali Marlow) | Series Producer |
Matt Hulme | Producer |
Annabel Jones | Executive Producer |
Alex Moody | Executive Producer |
Charlie Brooker | Executive Producer |
Damon Tai | Editor |
Jon Kassell | Director of Photography |
Videos
Who's this penis?
Philomena Cunk's landmark mockumentary series taking us through Britain's history, journeying from the Big Bang to Brexit.
Featuring: Diane Morgan (Philomena Cunk) & Tom Holland.
How did dinosaurs become extinct?
Philomena Cunk's theory on why the dinosaurs might have become extinct.
Featuring: Diane Morgan (Philomena Cunk).
Press
Cunk on Britain, in which history is told at us by dumb people, has been done before, of course - among others, Daisy Donovan and Ali G played the faux-naif ingenue, targeting talking-head experts with wildly varying levels of malice. And done before, anciently before, with Sellar and Yeatman's 1066 and All That, published in 1930 to frankly bemused shouts of weeping, gleeful mirth from all England's minor public schools.
But Diane Morgan, who has proved she's hardly a one-trick pony with her winningly cynical foil to Anna Maxwell Martin in Motherland, is the best yet. Not sure whether even her supreme deadpan can sustain all the expert interviewees - at some point even Diane's got to crack up - but many lines just zinged. Of the Bayeux Tapestry: "Like a Game of Thrones season finale drawn by an eight-year-old boy." Or: "It's just like being there, but in wool."
Euan Ferguson, The Guardian, 8th April 2018TV review, Cunk on Britain (BBC2)
A brilliant puncturing of television histories.
Sean O'Grady, The Independent, 4th April 2018Philomena Cunk, the breath-takingly dim-witted arts and history presenter, ought to do a series on classical music, when she's finished her moronic survey of our island race, in Cunk On Britain (BBC2). That might take some time, since she began with the Big Bang, in an account that promises to travel 'from ancient man to Ed Sheeran'.
Cunk, played with a face as cold and immobile as a side of mutton by Motherland actress Diane Morgan, is a send-up of every self-regarding TV personality who ever recited a script while standing on a windswept cliff-edge and gazing portentiously at the horizon.
'She's like an idiot twin sister,' says Morgan. 'Occasionally she'll get things so right you think maybe she isn't an idiot. Maybe she's a genius.'
The TV in-jokes wear a bit thin. But her malapropisms are hilarious: when she talks about the king of the dinosaurs, 'T'yrannical sawdust rex', or the 'Baywatch tapestry', she's in the great comic tradition of Joyce Grenfell and Dame Edna.
The professors and historians facing her pea-brained questions evidently knew what to expect, and played along. Ronald Hutton and Neil Oliver were trying not to giggle -- but full marks to the lady at the National Archives who talked to Cunk like a weary primary schoolteacher.
No, she explained patiently, the Domesday Book isn't cursed. Perhaps they're used to daft questions at the National Archives.
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail, 4th April 2018Diane Morgan's deadpan ignoramus tackles the big questions in this series, starting with the big bang and stumbling blindly forward. Along the way, she takes a hatchet to the striding-and-talking tropes of the BBC factual department and baits experts with bewildering displays of idiocy ("Why did stone age people bury all their stuff underground?" she asks one baffled archaeologist). A corrective to self-important historical docs or a decent but limited joke stretched well beyond breaking point? Cunk on Britain is probably a bit of both.
Phil Harrison, The Guardian, 3rd April 2018Cunk on Britain preview
The only thing that doesn't quite come off are the spoof interviews don't quite come off, as experts have wised up since the day of Ali G and now seem in on the joke, matching Cunk awkward silence for awkward silence.
Steve Bennett, Chortle, 3rd April 2018Diane Morgan interview
Actor and comedian Diane Morgan discusses her brilliant BBC alter ego ahead of new BBC series Cunk on Britain.
Simon Hattenstone, Radio Times, 3rd April 2018TV review: Cunk On Britain, BBC2
The dimwits are taking over. Philomena Cunk, alias Diane Morgan, finally gets a whole series in which she has the chance to look at the entire history of Britain, interview various experts and, while she is at it, get things hopelessly, hilariously wrong.
Bruce Dessau, Beyond The Joke, 31st March 2018'What if spaghetti's illegal?' Cunk breaks down Brexit
After the recent European summit, the cultural commentator explores the referendum and ponders the culinary implications of such a seismic decision.
Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris, The Guardian, 27th March 2018