@thecomicscomic Published Nov. 15, 2026, 11:00 a.m. ET See more of our coverage in your search results.
Diane Morgan is at it again! This time, her fictional expert Philomena Cunk foolishly asks famous actors, directors, composers and academics slightly misinformed questions about the history of cinema. Originally three episodes for BBC Two, Netflix has carved it up into Five Easy Pieces — no, six Etsy peaches of parody — for you to enjoy.
Opening Shot: Cunk stands on The Hollywood Walk of Fame, looking into the camera while telling us: “Humankind has been responsible for some incredible achievements, conquering the landscape, growing the Great Wall of Chinese, discovering the Mona Lisa, and inventing global warning. But none of these superficially impressive feats compares to our finest creation, cinema.”
The Gist: The latest mockumentary project from Charlie Brooker and Diane Morgan follows 2023’s limited series Cunk On Earth and the 2025 film, Cunk On Life.
You may recognize Morgan from more traditional comedy roles such as Liz in the BBC Two sitcom, Motherland, or Kath in Netflix’s After Life. But her Cunk creation has taken on a life of its own, earning her an Emmy nomination for writing as well as two nominations at the BAFTAs. Philomena Cunk’s malapropisms and general befuddlement put her interview subjects on edge. The episodes follow the history of film roughly chronologically, so the first 13 minutes cover the origins of cinema and the silent era. The following five episodes teach us about serious things such as Soviet Montage Theory, German Expression, and stop-motion animation, while also wondering why filmmaker Michael Bay loves explosions or what compelled a man to fall inside the Death Star during Star Wars.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Obviously, Cunk on Earth and Cunk on Life.
Our Take: It’s fun for film scholars or comedy nerds alike.
The first episode includes a series of montages that show off what makes movies so spectacular, including footage from Superman (1978), Mutiny on the Bounty, Hello, Dolly!, Star Wars, Independence Day, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Spider-Man (2002), London Has Fallen, and White Eagle before finally faking us out with 1902’s Le Milles-Pattes Humain, directed by Monsieur “Pois de Merde.”
“It’s hard to imagine a time before film, unless you watch a film of it, which you can’t because cameras hadn’t been invented yet,” Cunk tells us.
Cunk is the kind of fanciful fool who will ask an academic why Birth of The Nation is considered worse than her aunt’s racist ramblings on Facebook, or remind us that before we had movies, we didn’t have access to see beautiful people so easily. There’s also a brilliant gambit in this opening segment, in which she demonstrates how Buster Keaton’s famous falling house stunt worked in Steamboat Bill, Jr. But her most common tactic is employing malapropism to throw off her interview subjects, such as asking Bay why directors yell “cunt” so much, or trying to convince academics to explain such classic films as Metro Police and The Jizz Slinger.
In previous mockumentaries, Cunk might have actually fooled some of her interview subjects (or fooled us into thinking she’d fooled them). This time around, it’s impossible to pretend that British celebs such as Cumberbatch or Gordon Ramsey are not in on the joke. It’s a testament to both her comedy talents as well as their abilities to serve as straight men that they can still deliver laughs with their brief scenes.
Performance Worth Watching: It’s really all about Morgan’s Philomena Cunk. She earns bonus points with us for this zinger in the opening episode: “Al Jolson’s use of blackface is a shocking reminder of early Hollywood’s casual and endemic racism. It’s the sort of cultural insensitivity that today would lead to him being cancelled or given an hourlong Netflix stand-up special.”
Sex And Skin: Brief full-frontal scenes appear in a montage during one episode.
Parting Shot: We get a tease for the next episode, with Cunk telling Benedict Cumberbatch: “Alfred Hitchcock once said that actors should be treated like cattle. My mate Paul had a job on a farm where he had to collect semen from the man cows by pushing an electric probe inside their rectums to make them ejaculate into a jar. Why did Hitchcock want to do that?”
Cumberbatch, stunned: “Uhhhhhh.” Roll credits!
Our Call: STREAM IT! The Buster Keaton tribute is killer. But even in the opening minutes, she’ll have you laughing as she’s the antithesis to Nicole Kidman’s AMC Cinemas tribute. Instead of Kidman’s iconic line, “Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this,” we get Cunk boasting instead: “Outside this palace of dreams, your life is so meaningless, you might as well be a smudge on a bathroom tile.”
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
