“Very funny, and as an excuse to laugh yourself into a stupor, it’s very welcome, too”
Cunk on Britain, BBC2
“The way Diane Morgan balances Cunk’s wide-eyed astonishment and bloody-minded daftness easily sustains the concept for the full half-hour, and even leaves you wanting a little more. As a puncture in the armour of po-faced documentaries, it is very funny, and as an excuse to laugh yourself into a stupor, it’s very welcome, too.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian
“There’s a virtuosity to her malapropistic misunderstanding of anything and everything that’s totally absurd and becomes almost hypnotic in its incessancy. There is no one on TV who gets it wrong with such clueless authority, yet really is an expert when spoofing the documentary form and all its presenter-on-a-journey clichés.”
James Jackson, The Times
“Cunk on Britain may have been slightly confused as to whether it wanted to cast a cold eye on Brexit or parody the Schama school of self-satisfied history documentaries. But it was consistently hilarious, which was ultimately all that mattered.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph
“Cunk is a send-up of every self-regarding TV personality who ever recited a script while standing on a windswept cliff-edge and gazing portentiously at the horizon. The TV in-jokes wear a bit thin. But her malapropisms are hilarious.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
“The likes of Sacha Baron Cohen have been there before with the whole ‘pretending to be ignorant to illicit amusing but sometimes revealing responses’ shtick. But Morgan has arguably carved out a niche as the finest modern example, delivering preposterous pieces to camera and conducting awkward interviews with real-life experts to winning comic effect.”
Mark Butler, The i
“It doesn’t make sense that she’s quite so dim or when she starts talking about her mate Paul. She’s not a character in the way the forerunners were, just a way of delivering jokes. The jokes are funny, Philomena Cunk isn’t.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express
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