he has questions you don’t want to answer. She has answers that do not make sense. She is a clueless TV journalist asking ridiculous questions about art, war, religion, the world’s greatest philosophical thinkers and the creation of nations, among other complex topics while discussing random off-topics like her friend Paul and terrible ex-boyfriends.

But if you agree to set aside five hours for half-hour episodes, you will end up learning about a thing or bit about immorality, hypocrisy and the seeming inanity of human nature.

Diane Morgan returns as Philomena Cunk in her latest offering Cunk on Earth - a five-part Netflix mockumentary series. Regular streaming series watchers outside Britain immediately recognise her as one of the supporting players in the recently concluded Ricky Gervais`s comedy series After Life. But in Great Britain, Morgan’s been on TV for years, especially playing one recurring character - Philomena Cunk.

It all started ten years ago when Black Mirror co-creator Charlie Brooker wrote and hosted a British comedy series, Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe. It was a satirical review of the week’s news and Morgan played the role of a TV correspondent named Philomena Cunk.

Cunk is an ill-informed journalist who is prone to mispronunciations and misquoting but she says what she thinks, which is mostly very funny. Over the last decade, the character has been spun off into several sequels, either limited series or one-shot specials like Cunk on Shakespeare, Cunk on Britain, Cunk and Other Humans.

They all have a common formula which is to send her all over the world to share her observations and ask actual experts about these places and events. Her questions and the experts` bewildered expressions while controlling their expressions make it a great watch.

She starts this series with the basics: the evolution of man. But her important question to real archaeologists is: “If early human man was made out of the same meat we were, did we have a branding, like beef or pork?”

This is just the start of a journey that takes her from the first civilised cities to the pyramids to the Greeks and the Romans. All the while, she’s asking experts extraordinarily dumb and uninformed questions like “How did the Egyptians build the pyramids?” and “Did they start at the top and work down or start at the bottom and work up?”

One moment she is in front of the Mona Lisa and ends up in a cave to look at ancient cave paintings of animals and people, which by the way fail to impress her so she just turns the flashlight off.

Cunk on Earth is an extremely funny, unexpectedly informative mockumentary that delivers laughs and information about human history side by side.

Sustaining this pattern of questions, observations and comments over five episodes was always going to be a big challenge. For instance, would a joke be funny enough to last that long?

Turns out it is possible like the recurrent interjection of the 1989 technetronic song Pump Up the Jam, playing halfway through every episode. It makes no sense yet the music videos play uninterrupted for 20 to 40 seconds at a time. At times you know it`s coming, but you don`t want it to come yet. For some reason, it only gets funnier each time it plays.

This is because it is not just Morgan who is carrying the show. It is a very well-written show. The interviewees share a more or less equal part in its success. They are the best in their fields and we have a lot of them roped in to answer her spectacular questions, which keeps it moving.

A segment does not linger on anyone for too long (Cunk at times asks herself to keep the answers short and to a soundbite length). I won`t lie about that sometimes I genuinely thought what are they doing here especially when she is asking questions such as: “It was so long ago. Why should I care?”

Religion is a tricky subject but they tackled it in a hilarious way. While she goes on in detail about other religions, she says that she is not going to leave out Islam but when she starts speaking, the audio switches to a long beep.

If you’re wondering, by the way, if the interviewees know that they’re on a comedy show, it turns out that they do. According to Morgan, she starts the two-hour interviews off with relatively straight questions and then, the character of Cunk comes out with her inquiries and they have no idea what she’s going to ask.

There is a pattern to the line of questioning as well: compare an old thing to a new thing, ask a question belonging to an earlier period and wait for a baffled response.

The experts don`t take offence; rather, they try to answer them with a straight face occasionally failing to control their smirks. But the fact is that these seemingly random questions often prompt genuinely thoughtful and contemplative answers. It is hard to leave the show without learning a thing or two.

The show was well received with a 100 percent critics and 86 percent audience score on Rotten Tomato despite the fact that there was little promotion and publicity.

Cunk on Earth is an extremely funny, unexpectedly informative mockumentary that delivers laughs and information about human history side by side. It is, in short, the show you must be watching right now.

The writer is a digital communication expert and consultant currently working in the public sector. He is the mastermind behind the digital platforms, Sukhan, Mani’s Cricket Myths and Over The Line