‘Cunk on Life’ Review: Blessedly Stupid, Wickedly Smart

Few modern minds have been able to plunge the depths of human existence like English presenter Philomena Cunk. With her trademark dim wit, easy rapport with interviewees, and complete lack of knowledge in just about every subject matter, Cunk leaves a mark (or maybe a stain?) on the documentary genre once more in Cunk on Life.

Of course, Philomena Cunk is not a real person, but a wonderfully bizarre character. Devised by actress and comedian Diane Morgan, Cunk is the least qualified documentarian in the business, prone to nonsensical tangents and many a malapropism. Thus far she’s tackled history and current events; this time around, she’s after the meaning of life and the universe. The mockumentary special follows Cunk as she sits down with experts, professors of theology, philosophy, biology and physics, all who have as many questions about Philomena as she does about the world.

Cunk on Life follows a loose structure that sees the titular presenter go chapter by chapter through the human experience, from creation to evolution to existentialism (ironically, death comes about halfway through, in Chapter IV). That framework feels the strain of some uneven bits and bobs, and there’s definitely some fat that could’ve been trimmed. The special is an hour and then some, and creator Charlie Brooker—the brain behind Black Mirror—includes a few too many self-indulgent jokes and flourishes to go unmentioned. While the segment it leads to is ultimately hilarious (we can only hope that Binko Says Don’t Jump! gets the same treatment as Bluey), an extended Streamberry reference feels like a weak jab at the streamer backing and profiting off of Brooker’s ideas.

Some segments drag or wrap up a tad too quickly, but on the whole the special is business as usual for Philomena Cunk. That’s a good thing. There are some returning experts from the series Cunk on Earth, but many of the professors that Cunk sits down with are new to her brand of questionable questioning. Like in the previous show, plenty of joy comes from never knowing just how “in on it” the interviewees are. It’s safe to say that physicist Brian Cox gets the gist of things, happy to admit that Cunk is wasting his time but not unhappy about wasting it in such a way. English professor Greg Dart and neuroscientist Anil Seth, on the other hand, are about as earnest as they come, and both routinely get utterly confounded by Cunk’s approach. Is there really a Russian author named Turnover that Dart has never come across in his career, or can Philomena Cunk just not read the directions on a two-sided sheet of paper properly? The man of letters is either too polite or too stunned to say.

Though some jokes and bits are inevitably better than others, you’re sure to laugh a great deal. Cunk gets downright out of pocket at times, asserting her intense hatred of Van Gogh in front of an art history expert or insisting that only 40% of humans have skeletons to a surgeon (the rest of us are just “solid meat,” obviously). Through it all, Morgan’s delivery remains delightfully, diabolically dry, asking her increasingly insane interview questions with the utmost seriousness. You have to be wickedly smart to make something so blessedly stupid work this well. Philomena’s encroaching idiocy never derails the proceedings, only guides them in new, weird directions, and isn’t that what we want out of a documentary anyway?

‘Cunk on Life’ is streaming now on Netflix.