Cunk on Life

Philomena Cunk examines life and its meaning. By speaking to academics and other experts in their fields she looks at the big questions regarding life.

If you've watched Cunk on Earth you'll know what to expect: Philomena Cunk (Dianne Morgan) essentially asks absurdly silly but funny questions to some of the brightest people on the planet. If you've watched Da Ali G Show this will seem familiar as Cunk is derivative of that (and not as good).

However, despite not being entirely original it is pretty funny and entertaining. Dianne Morgan is great with spot-on timing.

Not as good as Cunk on Earth though. The set-ups are less intelligent, the humour cheaper and lower-brow and the experts less easily shocked.

Last time they seemed shocked at the silly questions but, to their credit, didn't lose their composure. Here they seemed to expect the silly questions (possibly they'd done their research and seen previous Cunk stuff) and rolled with it. Brian Cox, the eminent physicist, even seemed to be successfully anticipating where Cunk was going with her double entendre questions but played along anyway.

Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan) is discussing Life, the Universe and Everything with her many guests in a wide ranging conversation. The first twenty minutes is really Cunk on Religion. It can come off as Cunk making fun of religion. That part depends on the audience. The comedy is a bit scattered. The issue is that some of the experts are catching on to the premise and they're not all playing it correctly. On the other hand, Brian Cox is going full grouch and that is hilarious. Pump Up the Jam is fun in the Monty Python way. There is a chance that Cunk is getting diminishing returns. We'll see.

They must have lost the writers and producers that make Cunk on Earth a success. The jokes are all flat, and the timing that made all the jokes worth is nowhere to be found. Philomena seems like she's trying to force all the words out in rapid fire, not giving anything room to breathe. It's also turned from a fake documentary into a self aware comedy, which makes it a bit unbearable.

It gives off the vibe that someone wanted to pump out material after the recent success of Cunk on Earth, but didn't want to put in the prerequesite work to make it good again.

A pity, Diane deserves so much better. She's gone so far and has so much further to go.

I love Cunk. I've seen all of her shows to date and love them all. I was so excited for the new one and put it on without a moment's hesitation.

And then... Just underwhelmed all the way. Jokes felt flat and repetitive. The experts are repeats and are clearly in on the joke by now that their reactions just don't feel sincere.

I'm not sure what's gone wrong behind the scenes, but the formula that worked so well, and was borrowed heavily from the Borat/Ali G playbook, didn't work here. Maybe it's me, maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe the ideas tank is dry and they're treading the same ground without anything new or fun left to do. Probably a bit of both.

It's a shame. I hope they can find their spark again. Until then, I'll continue to enjoy what was.

I am in such conflict here. I love the concept of the Cunk series -the mockumentary style. But the jokes are mostly toilet and genital humour that a 14 year old boy would be proud of.

What made the earlier Cunk mockumentaries quite riveting is that the humour might have had a smattering of genital and toilet humour but it was generally clever. In this special, it seems that the writers decided that virtually every word needed to have a double entendre. It simply felt very childish, silly and a sad, weak attempt at humour. The second serious problem is the too much repetition of Cunk's poor social skills in mentioning vile information using her ex boyfriend and now, a new character, her Aunt. This technique worked well when spaced across episodes. It lost it's impact compacted into a one hour special. Sadly, the, dare we call them 'thoughtful' real scientific information that was present, albeit briefly in each episode of earlier Cunk, was lost in this quest for a laugh a minute.

Having said all of that, Morgan is so brilliant an actor that her expressiveness alone is enough to create amusement. Thanks to her, this special is lifted higher than the writing deserves.