Philomena Cunk: The Total Comedy

Philomena Cunk was born as a character on Charlie Brooker's satirical show—the culprit of

— on BBC2.

Cunk was a satire on female TV presenters, mocking the prosody and bluestocking tics of the trade.

So Brooker required that would-be performers speak English with the affected neutrality of a BBC journalist, with no regional traits.

But when actress Diane Morgan applied for the role of her, she asked to audition with her accent from Bolton, a city attached to Manchester.

Brooker accepted, and Philomena Cunk took on, like Pinocchio, a life of her own.

The beauty of this story is that Diane Morgan did not make a career in the serious theater because of that same accent that has finally led her to success.

The Earth according to Philomena Cunk

(Netflix) is the internationalization of a character who has been making the British laugh since Brooker's program and his independence in

,

or

.

It was considered too parochial a comedy, trusting everything to the British cultural context, puns and Morgan's Boltonian accent, but his outing to the world confirms, once again, that humor is a universal force.

I've never been to Bolton, but I have a hard time laughing.

Cunk interviews university experts who react spontaneously to his nonsense, such as: "Did there really exist the fifties?"

or "Which was more culturally significant,

Beyoncé's Renaissance or

It is a total comedy, which transcends the parodied.

At the end of the first chapter it's hard to know what we're laughing at: the academic petulance, the idiocy of the reporter, Leonardo da Vinci, us?

I don't know, but one turns off the television with a very pleasant sensation of lightness, as if important things were no longer important.

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