Diane Morgan is bringing the Philomena Cunk new cinema series back on Thursday 12 November, when Cunk on Cinema premieres on Two. The first episode goes out at 10pm, and the remaining two parts will be available on iPlayer the same day.
Diane Morgan and the three-part return
The new run is a three-part series, which keeps the format tight rather than stretching the joke across a longer season. Morgan is reprising Philomena Cunk for a fresh look at the history of cinema, a move that gives viewers a fixed launch date and a clear route to watch it the same evening.
She co-wrote the series with Charlie Brooker, and the pair also serve as executive producers. Al Campbell directs all three parts, so the return has a single creative shape rather than a patchwork of separate episodes.
Two at 10pm
The 10pm slot on Two makes the premiere the centrepiece of the night, with the rest of the series shifting immediately to iPlayer. That same-day split matters for viewers who want the broadcast first or prefer to stream the full run without waiting for another schedule cycle.
Cunk on Cinema follows the pattern set by earlier Philomena Cunk projects. Philomena Cunk first appeared in Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe, and the character later carried Cunk on Britain in 2018 before Cunk on Earth arrived four years later. This new series keeps the character inside territory while giving the format a cinema-specific brief.
Silent era to future
The series starts from the silent era and moves through New Hollywood to the present and the future, so the structure is built to cover cinema history in stages rather than in a single sweep. Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Kermode, Michael Bay, Mark Cousins, Daniel Pemberton and Seamus McGarvey are among the industry figures interviewed along the way.
That gives the series its twist: it is billed as the interviewer’s most glamorous one to date, yet the whole thing is still filtered through Philomena Cunk's deadpan mockumentary style. The result should be less a reverent history lesson than a guided collision between prestige names and a character who asks questions no straight documentary would dare to ask.
For viewers of Diane Morgan, the practical move is simple: mark Thursday 12 November, switch on Two at 10pm if you want the first part live, or go straight to iPlayer for the rest on the same day. The unanswered part is not the schedule but the material itself — what questions, jokes and deadpan verdicts she uses to take cinema from the silent era to the future.
