TV preview by Steve Bennett

Michael Gove famously said while campaigning to leave the EU: ‘We’ve had enough of experts.’  So as we march headfirst towards Brexit, it’s in that spirit that Philomena Cunk, full-time idiot but part-time idiot sauvant, asks: ‘Now we’ve got our country back, what actually is it?’ 

Nor is that the only allusion to the referendum result in the first of five episodes of Cunk On Britain, which takes us from pre-history, the age of ‘Tyrannical Sawdust Rex’ up to the Tudors, ‘the Kardashians of British history’.

She describes the Norman Conquest as a backwards Brexit, and speaks of the end of Roman rule in Britain as ‘splitting from the unelected bureaucrats of Rome’… noting with wry naivety that the country was then immediately thrust into the Dark Ages.

Politics aside, the script – by Charlie Brooker, former Channel 4 executive Ben Caudell, and Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris, who created the spoof modern-day Ladybird Books – is simply very silly. Cunk’s absolute lack of awareness means they can put any absurd line into her mouth, and Diane Morgan will deliver it, glassy-eyed.

It’s a mash of misunderstandings, malapropisms and  even dad jokes (apparently all the castles in Britain were built by one man, Mr Norman Architecture), but the gags are tightly packed, no line wasted.

And for all the landmark history programmes the BBC has ever made, Cunk On Britain might be the closest to capturing the sketchy grasp most people have of the past, even if it’s presented through the prism of absurdity.

Our dimwitted presenter certainly knows what’s required of those who front such prestigious series: shouting at helicopters and ‘walking somewhere impressive with my mouth shut while my mouth speaks anyway, like I’m telling around in me own head’. Though few flagship historical programmes play almost the entire opening sequence of the 1980s sitcom Brush Strokes. An omission finally rectified here.

The only thing that doesn’t quite come off are the spoof interviews don’t quite come off, as experts have wised up since the day of Ali G and now seem in on the joke, matching Cunk awkward silence for awkward silence.

Yet she does manage to completely stump  Robert Peston with a surprisingly straightforward question: ‘What’s the most political thing that’s ever  happened in Britain?’ Politicians who’ve been on the end of his interrogations will enjoy seeing him squirm.

• Cunk On Britain is on BBC Two at 10pm tonight.

Review date: 3 Apr 2018
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