First Christmas, then Shakespeare, Britain, humans, Earth, then life itself. Now, cinema is the latest grand topic to get Cunked.
The history of movies gets the mockumentary treatment by the redoubtable Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan) in the new six-episode Netflix miniseries “Cunk on Cinema.” The blitheringly confident presenter, as they say in England, traces the path of moving pictures from the beginnings of the technology to today, boldly getting just about everything wrong, all in Cunk’s authoritative deadpan.
Philomena is the creation of Charlie Brooker, for his 2013 topical satirical comedy program “Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe.” Morgan, meanwhile, has utterly inhabited the character, down to her own greater Manchester-Bolton accent. She’s so good at her voice of misinformed authority that her interview subjects — experts in their fields — know what they’re getting into, but still get thrown by her assuredness.
The luminaries in “Cunk on Cinema” include film historians and critics, as well as actor Benedict Cumberbatch, director Michael Bay, screenwriter Steven E. de Souza and David Rubin, the former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Morgan has multiple BAFTA nominations as Philomena and an Emmy nomination for co-writing the series “Cunk on Life.” Brooker was also nominated for co-writing “Cunk on Life,” but he is probably best known to American audiences as the creator of “Black Mirror” and his Emmy-winning work on the show’s most notable episodes, including “Bandersnatch,” “USS Callister” and “San Junipero.”
Brooker and Morgan spoke over a video call to chat about Philomena, Jean-Luc Godard and five Italian spiders. This conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Philomena has the monotone delivery, the cadence of a BBC documentary presenter down, the emptiness that conveys authority … Were there specific models for her, or was it just the concept? How did it start?
Diane Morgan: Well, it started for me when Charlie wrote a character called Philomena Cunk, and he wanted someone with quite a posh English accent, which I don’t have, in case you can’t hear that. So I auditioned for it, but I practiced it in my own accent and I thought it was funnier for some reason. Charlie heard it and he liked it as well.
Charlie Brooker: We had a character [on “Weekly Wipe”] called Barry … who was an idiot who would comment on the news as though he was in one of those — VH1 used to have them — nostalgia shows where people would talk about the 1980s. But he would talk about things that were happening that week as though they’d been a while ago. He was played by our director, Al Campbell, who directed “Cunk on Cinema” as well. Al has a working-class London accent, so some people were complaining that we were mocking the working classes.
So I was like, “Well, we need to counteract this. We’ll have a female character who’s posh.” That’s why the name Philomena Cunk, because it’s slightly posh. She was meant to be a little bit “British Bake Off,” a little bit cupcake blogger. And then Diane ruined it in the best way.
Morgan: It really backfired, didn’t it?
Brooker: When I saw Diane’s tape, I doubled over with laughter. So a lot of that is your natural cadence and your natural flatness, wouldn’t you say? What percentage is you?
Morgan: I’d say it’s about 80% me. It’s quite a high percentage. As the character’s grown, she’s got a little bit more Brian Cox — not the actor, the physicist — a bit in awe of everything.
Charlie Brooker on Philomena Cunk, who he calls “slightly posh”: “She was meant to be a little bit ‘British Bake Off,’ a little bit cupcake blogger. And then Diane ruined it in the best way.”
(Matt Kennedy / Netflix)
The show, despite its veneer of stolid BBC-ness, isn’t above some extremely NSFW language, including “yo mama” jokes. Is it my imagination, or is the language in this one a little randier than before?
Morgan: It’s always been quite mucky, hasn’t it?
Brooker: I guess there’s a C-bomb in the opening, that line to Michael Bay. The Brits, we like a bit of swearing.
Morgan: I love a bit of swearing. In “Cunk on Life,” where she’s got the Bruegel painting [“The Triumph of Death”], and she says, “What the f— is this?” That’s all it needed. Beautiful. If you’d have said, “What the hell is this?” — not good enough.
Brooker: Hopefully, the show is a mix of high and low brow. We’re doing, I don’t know, “Battleship Potemkin” and then a “your mum” joke.
Has Philomena evolved? Part of the gag is that she can’t evolve too much, but I feel like I detect more of her personal annoyance and preferences lately.
Morgan: I think she has evolved, but barely at all. She’s got a tiny bit more of a backstory where she’s got an ex-boyfriend and an auntie and things like that.
Brooker: Maybe we see more of her surrounding world, rather than into her soul and her mind. We certainly hear a lot about her mate, Paul [a recurring reference in the shows].
Morgan: I love the Paul bit. When I read the script and see there’s a Paul bit coming, God, I love it.
Brooker: My favorite is when he built a treadmill for a snake. [Both erupt into laughter.] It accidentally pulled its head off.
Morgan: That’s my favorite!
Brooker: She’s more argumentative now or prone to believe her own … back in “Cunk on Life,” she’d say, “No, no, no, you are wrong. I saw something on YouTube and actually the moon isn’t real.” Now, she’s reaching for ChatGPT or Claude and going, “No, no, no. Look, never mind you, expert; I’m going to ask this chatbot in my pocket.” Her level of idiocy has evolved with the times.
Does Diane ever break?
Morgan: Oh yeah. Not that often, because once I start, it’s really hard to stop.
Brooker: One of the big differences between Diane and Philomena is Diane’s quite a generous laugher in real life. Usually it’s [the interview subjects who] go first. They don’t know what the questions are. We’re not doing a “Borat”; we’re not hoodwinking them. They know who Philomena is. Some of them are recurring guests. We ask them to treat you with respect and try not to make a joke of the questions, but answer them earnestly.
Morgan: I think a lot of them are frozen in fear. I think they’re surprised at how nervous they are because they see it on TV and it’s all edited together really tightly. I can see why they feel that because it does feel like it’s going very badly, but to feel awkward and tense — the tension, I think, is lovely.
Morgan outside the Velaslavasay Panorama. Does she ever break character? “Not that often, because once I start, it’s really hard to stop.”
(Matt Kennedy / Netflix)
Was Michael Bay as perplexed as he seemed?
Morgan: I think he was, and he didn’t get my accent, as well, with certain things.
Brooker: He was surprisingly a great interview because he was so thrown by a lot of what you’re asking him, but very polite. He’s very patient and polite.
How did you get away with the David Rubin interview, in which the questions were NSFW, to put it mildly? I knew immediately where you were going with that and I laughed out loud through the whole segment. But part of his legacy is to defend the dignity of the academy.
Morgan: He did seem quite serious, didn’t he? Even when I was doing it, I thought, “Is he enjoying this?” He seemed like he wasn’t really enjoying it, but that makes it better for me. It’s more fun to watch, isn’t it, if someone looks like they’re having a terrible time.
Brooker: He definitely did. There’s a really good moment, which I think we’re going to put on social media, which we couldn’t fit into the episode. You ask him … it’s a really long question … “When an actor is experiencing something, are they pretending to experience the thing that they’re experiencing or are they experiencing the actor pretending to experience the thing that they’re experiencing, which is pretending?” And then you go, “Sorry, should I rephrase that?” And then you ask him exactly the same question again. He was very, very, very patient. A good sport.
One of the lines that really got me was “Quentin Tarantino, which is Italian for ‘five spiders.’”
Morgan: [both laughing] That did make me laugh out loud. That’s one of the times I was uncontrollable. I couldn’t do the line. We had to have a break for at least an hour because of the five spiders.
Could you throw out a couple of your favorite lines from “Cunk on Cinema”?
Brooker: I’ll remind you of one, Diane, that you said. It’s a highbrow joke. It was about Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” being “shot on the streets of Paris … like a rabid dog.”
Morgan: Yeah, “like a rabid dog.” I loved that one. Took the day off when you wrote that one, didn’t you?
Perhaps my favorite moment in any Cunk show was in “Cunk on Earth,” when you were talking with a square-jawed military expert (professor Ashley Jackson) about nuclear war. He was giving a dark forecast for humankind and Philomena had an uncharacteristic moment of suddenly crying and he reacted in such a human way. You changed the subject to ABBA and his tone changed, his innate sense of caring about another person took over. I thought that was beautiful. Was that a surprise?
Morgan: Well, I didn’t think it’d be touching. There is sort of a poignancy to it. But I really wish that when I said, “Do you like ABBA?” and he said, “Yeah,” and I said, “What’s your favorite ABBA song?” [He responded, “Dancing Queen.”] I wish he just said “Waterloo” — getting back into battles, isn’t it? Aww. And I could have gone, [bursting into sobs] “Waterloo!” Well, you only think of these things when you’re walking home, don’t you? So annoying.