“Do you like ABBA?” “I love ABBA”

June 19, 2024 9:38 AM

A compilation of Philomena Cunk moments. Formerly: [1][2][3][4]
posted by Wordshore (28 comments total)

I lost it at the "letter H" bit.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:43 AM on June 19 [5 favorites]

they could have made a passable vegan burger to put inside the bread [tiktok]
posted by HearHere at 9:48 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

I love this character. I have seen some of her stuff and I have enjoyed it. Does anyone know how much of the interviews are pure prank? Do the experts/scientists sit down in front of cameras thinking they are about to be asked serious questions, or do they know this is going to be a comedy bit? Or is it just that they have a remarkable ability to maintain a straight face in the context of weird stupidity and non sequitur like this?
posted by SoberHighland at 9:49 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

From the discussion of Cunk on Earth on Fanfare - regarding how "in on it" the interviewees are.
posted by LionIndex at 9:51 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

The fact nobody has done CUNK NIXON is one of the great tragedies of the twenty-first century.
posted by Hogshead at 9:55 AM on June 19 [5 favorites]

is it just that they have a remarkable ability to maintain a straight face
Nigel Spivey (& others) almost lose it [content note: art]
posted by HearHere at 10:01 AM on June 19 [5 favorites]

It amazes me that her guests can keep a straight face.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 10:06 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

It amazes me she keeps a straight facce.
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:26 AM on June 19

I'm amazed at Prof. Brian Cox - he played it so straight at Cunk's "sucked off through a hole" phrase that I can't tell if he's just got a good poker face, or he was so naive that he missed the innuendo entirely (which I doubt, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:14 AM on June 19 [4 favorites]

Part of the magic is that this is how British experts are supposed to act, whether or not they're playacting it.

(And isn't all TV expertdom a matter of playacting to some degree, even if you do actually know your stuff? It's not enough that you are an expert, you have to have the correct comportment for it, too.)
posted by clawsoon at 11:23 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

Cunk: "What is the most political thing that has ever happened in Britain?"
Political expert: pause, deep sigh.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 12:08 PM on June 19 [2 favorites]

I find her funny, but only in small doses. I tried to watch one of her longer shows and had to give it up.
posted by briank at 12:13 PM on June 19 [7 favorites]

Interestingly, ABBA was part of a wave of European techo artists like Pump Up the Jam.
posted by SPrintF at 12:22 PM on June 19 [19 favorites]

he played it so straight at Cunk's "sucked off through a hole" phrase that I can't tell if he's just got a good poker face

Seriously? He's barely keeping it together, isn't he?
posted by The Bellman at 12:36 PM on June 19

My girlfriend and I discovered Cunk on Earth randomly on Netflix and thought it was the funniest thing, because at first it seems like a real documentary series, but the longer we watched the teaser preview the more clear it became that she was taking the piss. I sent a text to my father suggesting the program as though it were a real documentary. He texted me back a couple of days later furious that the host knew so little about history and science. He totally thought it was a real news program and never caught on the joke.
posted by UltraMorgnus at 12:36 PM on June 19 [6 favorites]

Also, agree about the small doses. I feel so bad for the experts, even if they are in on it, that after a while I just can't anymore, even though I find her incredibly funny. My wife calls this "a low tolerance for squirmy humor" (I call it "empathy") and I suspect it's highly correlated with what MeFi would call crouton-petting.
posted by The Bellman at 12:40 PM on June 19 [6 favorites]

"He totally thought it was a real news program and never caught on the joke."

Maybe that's what he wants you to think... ;)
posted by aesop at 1:31 PM on June 19 [6 favorites]

An interview with Diane Morgan that lifts a bit of the Cunk veil [Late NIght with Seth Meyers]
posted by chavenet at 1:51 PM on June 19 [8 favorites]

I sent a text to my father suggesting the program as though it were a real documentary. He texted me back a couple of days later furious that the host knew so little about history and science. He totally thought it was a real news program and never caught on the joke.

This is such a bizarre thing to see, isn't it? I remember watching Airplane with my stepfather, and he tried to treat it as a serious adventure movie and just ignored all the ridiculousness going on all over the screen. He essentially re-edited it back into Zero Hour! in his head while he was watching it. I couldn't even think of what to say to him. I was just gobsmacked.
posted by Naberius at 2:02 PM on June 19 [7 favorites]

I find her funny, but only in small doses. I tried to watch one of her longer shows and had to give it up.

Yep. This compilation is pretty funny. A whole hour is too much.
posted by ovvl at 2:32 PM on June 19

Yes, i really loved her "Moments of Wonder" but "Cunk on Earth" just felt like filler at times.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:24 PM on June 19

She's like the Wonderella of documentary. /dated reference

The compilation seems to have it the other way round, but I prefer her stand alone jokes to the benign scientist trolling for entertaining sound bytes of bafflement or moments of intense world-weariness. They are good, but a part of me always waits for her to go back on a cliff and do her monologue. The interviews are more like the Colbert guest range of fun.
posted by Ashenmote at 12:05 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]

> He totally thought it was a real news program and never caught on the joke.

When Stranger Things was in its first season, I made a social media post describing it as a documentary about a backwater of the Department of Energy's laboratory system and the havoc its ES&H practices had wreaked on the local community in the 1980s. (That's "environment, safety, and health," if you've been spared knowledge of that initialism up till now.) I have lots of friends working in actual DoE labs, and hooked two of them into believing it was a documentary, but I'm pretty sure they caught on shortly after.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:03 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]

I like her stuff--maybe in small doses, but that's fine--but the part leading up to the ABBA question really got to me, because, I'm thinking, that may be the only really sane response to finding out that there are still nukes. I mean, we could still end the world! Just like that! It wasn't just the eighties! What the actual fuck.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:52 AM on June 20 [6 favorites]

Right. It was heart-breaking enough to see an adult cry like that, and then that outburst comes from a character that isn't like that at all.
posted by Ashenmote at 9:24 AM on June 20 [4 favorites]

Agree on the lead-up to the ABBA question. IIRC that came at the end of Cunk on Earth. That series is the last thing I expected to be moved by. The naivety of her character made it quite poignant
posted by treepour at 2:44 PM on June 20 [1 favorite]

Somewhere, the actor who played Barry Shitpeas opposite Cunk is wondering what could have been... (YouTube)
posted by ewan at 3:02 AM on June 21

CDA: "but "Cunk on Earth" just felt like filler at times."

That's true. But part of what made it fun was all the video trickery. It looks like they did one actual trip to Italy, but most of the rest was filmed in Britain. One of the "Greece" segments was literally a nondescript beach with a stick and a Greek flag hung on it, and then they'd cut back and forth to various shots with zero Greece relevance. I thought that stuff was quite entertaining.
posted by sneebler at 8:53 AM on June 22