Ermagard! YES! Ze Frank is a national treasure!
And even:
Which episode?
Just click on the video I linked to above.
I just watched the first episode and laughed a lot. Couldn’t place where I knew Morgan from until I looked her up - she was Kath on the Gervais show “Afterlife”.
The format is really clever, and it’s interesting to see the lineage of material it’s drawn from. Certainly the Attenborough docs, some Ali G, heck I think the makers probably binge watched some of James Burke’s series.
I’d be curious to know to what extent the interview subjects are in on the joke, and how they are prepared. Apart from comedy, I think it’s an interesting exercise for me as a teacher to think how I would respond to someone genuinely asking a question I found inane and absent of any sensible background. I hope I’d be as polite as the subjects on Cunk.
I suspect they were instructed to answer Cunk like they would a child and probably specifically told not to try to be funny or too clever. Not an easy task for any expert.
Very possibly.
On Ali G the interviewees seemed completely unprepared for the absurdity of Cohen’s character, questions and statements. Which was the point - seeing how they responded to him. I remember Buzz Aldrin (who has already had to put up with more than his ration of shit for one lifetime) very patiently explaining that landing a man on the sun would be impossible, and that the sun, Earth and moon were in fact different celestial objects.
“And the age of Iron man was born. But this Iron man didn’t have super powers. He couldn’t fly or tolerate Gweneth Paltrow.”
Back in 1955, the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs TV show had this piece*, narrated by its much respected senior reporter/commentator:
*(shown on April 1st)
The producers apparently felt it was cruel and dismissive to throw an expert into a parody who with no preparation. They all know she’s going to be playing the fool, but it still catches them off guard.
Also, since there have been other series featuring Cunk, the experts would probably have heard of her, so they wouldn’t have been surprised at her questions.
I’m not sure about that, I’ve known her from her inception and I still don’t know what she’s going to come up with!
Not just polite, they seem to try to find a “real” question to answer, looking for a context where the question makes a kind of sense.
Yes, and I think that’s often a trait of really good teachers.
Once on Ali G, Sasha Cohen was talking with a professor of, IIRC, evolutionary biology. No matter what incredible nonsense he said (“I think my uncle may have evolved recently”), the prof took his questions seriously and tried his best to answer them. At most, he attempted to walk him through the fallacy of his purported preconceptions, but at no time was he unkind. It was really impressive.