Philomena Cunk may be the perfect character for our time. Lord save us

Cunk on lifeNetflix
★★★★

I’d wager some serious Monopoly money Cunk on life was intended as a Christmas release until Netflix thought better of it and pushed it to the new year to avoid upsetting the devout among its huge subscriber base. The latest iteration of the Charlie Brooker-created mockumentary is mostly about spiritual matters, but it’s certainly not reverent.

The biggest obsession of Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan) in this one-of-a-kind 71-minute special is the state of our souls. But in her thick Bolton accent “our souls” sounds a lot like “arseholes”. It’s a basic joke, but it worked on me repeatedly.

There’s a fun drinking game to take a sip every time she says it, or gets one of her interviewees to do it. We’re 12 minutes into the first one, but two minutes later – after an outburst of a made-up hymn calling on the King of Heaven to “enter our souls” and “fill us to the brim” – you’ll be rolling on the floor laughing or paralytic intoxication. Or, if you’re so inclined, in righteous indignation.

Cunk, who has been with us since 2013 (she first appeared on Brooker’s TV obsession show Weekly napkin), is a fabulous character that owes as much to the absurdist puns of Monty Python as it does to the shock tactics of Sacha Baron-Cohen’s Ali G.

She carries herself with the serious demeanor of a Richard Attenborough or a Brian Cox (one of her interview subjects here), but is completely devoid of knowledge, insight or even basic interest.

“Have you ever wondered how we got here, wondered where we’re going, wondered the greatest mystery of all, ‘What is the meaning of life,'” she asks rhetorically. “Well, I haven’t. But others have.”

She is the personification of the crazy celebrity presenter, affecting the center of gravity of an expression that is completely at odds with the emptiness of her thoughts (a word that frankly flatters the low-voltage firing of neurons going on inside the skull).