Missing the point | 26 April 2018

Because I’m a miserable old reactionary determined to see a sinister Guardianista plot in every BBC programme I watch, I sat stony-faced through much of Cunk On Britain (BBC2, Tuesdays).

Philomena Cunk (played by Diane Morgan) is a spoof comedy character who used to appear on Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe and has now been given a full series. Though the character is amiable enough — a heroically thick Northern woman in a smart jacket who goes around Britain making stupid observations and asking celebrity historians dumb questions — I can’t quite work out what the point of the joke is.

Is it a send-up of dumbed-down Britain? Is it designed to make TV history experts look pompous? Is it Molesworth reimagined for 21st-century viewers who’ve never read Down with Skool!? Is it Ali G without the awkward racial element, which would likely never get past the censors now? Is it just another medium for Brooker to experiment with one-liners he can’t get into any of his other creations?

Probably it’s a bit of all of these things. And I’m not saying it doesn’t have its moments. I liked the bit in the first episode where Cunk tells us that all William I-era architecture was the work of one amazing man — Norman Architecture. And I laughed a lot at the bit where she asks a historian to sum up the Wars of the Roses in three words, then in ten seconds. But other jokes didn’t quite come off — such as the one where she repeatedly asks a historian whether King Arthur ‘came a lot’ (as in ejaculated voluminously).

Again, though: why? With Ali G, the underlying joke was this: look at the eggshells we all tread on these days in our desperate efforts not to be in any way racist.