Cunk On Life, The next installment in the Cunk On… mockumentary specials featuring Britain’s most blasé documentarian Philomena Cunk (played by Diane Morgan), will arrive on Netflix on January 2 (and December 30 for our fellow fans across the pond in the UK), just in time to shepherd in 2025 with a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor and nihilist dread.
We last tuned in to watch Philomena Cunk traverse the far-reaching corners of the Earth (aka nondescript locations made to look like the far-reaching corners of the Earth) in "Cunk On Earth" as she explored the history of humankind, from man’s humble beginnings to the Roman empire, to the Renaissance, to the Industrial Revolution, and to World War I. In partially improvised segments, Diane Morgan’s unamused and oblivious Cunk peppers her guest list of niche experts with questions (“Why did they call World War I 'World War I?’ It’s quite a pessimistic number, isn’t it? Or did they just know it was the start of a franchise?”) which they attempt to answer earnestly, as a local zookeeper might do for an unimpressed and probing kindergartener—why is the snake sleeping, and why can’t it wake up, and did it eat yet, and is it true that a snake can eat a horse, and if the snake's not going to eat a horse today can we go back to the monkeys?
In the newest installment, Cunk On Life, Philomena Cunk will dare to the summits of existence and join the ranks of minds like Nietzche, Van Gogh, and Dostoyevsky in search of answers to the unanswerable. While Philomena’s quest will likely leave much to be desired in terms of deciphering the human condition and uncovering the meaning of life (terribly sorry to spoil, if you had high hopes), Diane Morgan’s parody of a painfully unaware and disinterested documentarian may have something comparable to offer humanity in its attempt for self-reckoning.
The power of parody and the beauty of fictitious characters with about as much inclination for introspection as a dog looking at itself in the mirror is that they are vessels for something greater. Parody is a play place for our worst impulses and inclinations; Philomena Cunk is a booger-nosed kid peeing in the ball pit. Both are containers through which we can acknowledge and give life to our worst thoughts and impulses, and then dispel them into comedy.
Philomena Cunk openly questions the importance of art, theater, the monarchy, money, and civilization. She is bored by Shakespeare and disappointed by feminism. Her lack of filter (and yes, stunning ignorance) enables her to voice what others might suppress and question what others might have questioned. Sometimes the parody of her clueless character is stretched like taffy a little too far, but the distance between that and reality gives an additional air of safety as we inspect, sometimes unknowingly, our own ignorance.
Philomena Cunk and the franchise that is Cunk On... succeeds at doing what any great parody or comedy can do: it alchemizes our lowest impulses and thoughts into the palatable realization and eventual acceptance that there exists in all of us a paradoxical relationship between our higher self—the bit that totally gets modern art and cries at the sight of the Grand Canyon—and our Cunks. Perhaps, more than the answers to life, what Philomena Cunk can give us in the new year is a means for introspection and a good laugh.