Cunk on Earth (2022) s01e03 Episode Script

1
[Philomena] Last time
in this potentially award-winning history
of human civilization,
I showed you how our ancestors
underwent a sudden spiritual awakening
like my Aunt Carol.
Like Carol,
they found exciting gurus to follow.
But unlike her,
they didn't leave their husband
to live on a farm in Wales with them,
alongside eight other women,
in a situation I can't discuss further
as it's currently under investigation
by North Wales Police.
Our world changed forever,
as religious messages
of tolerance and forgiveness
inspired mankind to fight like rats
in a shoe for hundreds of years.
But the world was about
to have its mind expanded
and then split at the seams
by a different kind of higher calling.
Humankind was about
to undergo a renaissance
by having the Renaissance,
here on the same planet
we still use today,
a glistening space rock known as Earth.
[epic music playing]
[contemplative music playing]
[birds singing]
It's the year 1440.
Not now, but then, in 1440.
And a new invention is about to spark
a blaze beneath the bush of possibility.
Centuries earlier,
the Chinese had invented printing,
but no one in Europe paid attention
until the printing press
was invented again
by a German called
Johannes "Steve" Gutenberg.
Gutenberg's press
was the first of its kind in history,
except Chinese history.
Did the printing press
actually change anything of significance?
If Gutenberg hadn't invented printing,
which meant that ideas could be
communicated throughout the world,
our culture would not have developed
in the same way as it has.
So in many ways, he has made the world
our modern world today.
So that's your idea of significant?
The first book to be printed
on Gutenberg's press was the Bible.
But as well as spreading the word of God,
it spread the word of scientists,
philosophers, and eventually Dan Brown.
Writing new books takes a long time,
so to give their presses something to do,
people reached back through time
in search of old material to repackage.
That's how the philosophy
of ancient Greece
suddenly came back in fashion
and blew minds.
At the time, most people's lives were
as grim and joyless as my Uncle Martin.
Their only hobbies were doing
backbreaking work, dying of the plague,
or being tortured.
As far as they were concerned,
this was all there was to life.
So for them, being exposed
to ancient Greek philosophy
wasn't boring like it is now,
but a mind-expanding experience that
transformed the way they saw themselves.
Like when my mate Paul
ate five ketamine brownies
and thought he could
communicate telepathically
with any animal he saw on television.
Although, whereas Paul ended up
sectioned for his own safety,
our ancestors decided to change the world.
This is Florence.
The Italians call it Firenze
to try and stop tourists from finding it.
But it's definitely Florence because
we double-checked it on a British map.
Florence might look
like a pointless mess today,
but in the 15th century
it was the epicenter
of an unprecedented artistic
and cultural phenomenon.
What was "Renai-sauce"?
Was that a sort of 16th-century ketchup?
Renaissance comes from
the French "renaissance."
"Re-naissance."
Naissance is birth.
So it was seen as a rebirth.
So it's not a condiment at all.
- No, not as far as I know.
- Okay.
What sauces did they use back then?
So this is an area of culinary history.
I'm not very familiar
with the history of sauces.
So you're not the sauce person?
I'm not predominantly a sauce person.
We're going to have to rethink
this whole interview.
During the Renaissance,
Florence produced artists who,
for the first time in history,
were competent enough
to create paintings worth looking at.
One of the most competent paintsmiths
was Botticelli.
So what's this painting?
So this is Alessandro Botticelli's
The Birth of Venus.
It's one of the great paintings
of the Renaissance.
So do we know if the birth of Venus
actually looked like this?
Well, it's depicting
a sort of mythical figure,
so it's sort of metaphorical.
So it's the idea of a goddess
who is coming into being,
rather than being born.
Her neck's very long.
Was she part giraffe
or could he just not do necks?
No, her her neck
It's meant to be a sign of beauty
that he would have elongated the neck.
I've spotted a mistake here. Look.
He's blowing,
and her hair's all whipping about.
But look at these trees on the right.
Not moving at all. No wind.
I think these people have been
photoshopped in.
It's all fake.
Other notable artists produced
3D paintings, or sculptures,
the most famous example
being this very naked man,
known as "Michelangelo's David."
If you manage to look past
his little marble goolies,
you'll notice
there's an incredible amount of detail
all over the rest of Michelangelo's body.
His eyes have pupils in them
like a Furby does.
His muscles are really detailed.
Look at his abs.
They prove gyms are bullshit
because they didn't have gyms back then,
but look how toned he is.
Then there's the realistic veins
in the back of his hands,
carrying statue blood to his fingers.
Yet, despite all this attention to detail,
a quick inspection of his back half
reveals he doesn't have an anus.
It's a baffling omission.
Maybe the sculptor got embarrassed
or the model had to leave early that day,
or didn't actually have an anus.
We just don't know.
The undisputed master of the Renaissance
was a human known as Leonardo da Vinci.
[woman] This is The Vitruvian Man.
It's a drawing made by Leonardo
in about 1490.
What's it for?
What's the point of it?
The point was that Leonardo wanted to know
how to sketch the human body proportion.
Just to be clear,
you can see his bits too?
I'm not imagining that.
Is there a version of this
with underpants on?
Oh, no, no, no.
He thought that was fine, did he?
It's a bit rude, isn't it?
[Sara] No, it's not.
Because, you know, the beauty
of the human body, of course.
Look at the todger.
You can't say that's beautiful.
Look at it.
Leonardo also filled notebook
after notebook with drawings of inventions
years ahead of their time.
What's that?
This is a flying machine.
It's like the helicopter.
[Philomena]
It doesn't look very convincing.
Like my mate Paul invented
a treadmill for his fiancée's pet snake,
and the sketches for that
were much more convincing than this.
And he was on mushrooms.
Mind you, the prototype
did pull the snake's head off.
Yeah
Worst ending to a birthday party
I've ever been to.
His inventions were one thing,
but it's mainly for his paintings
that we know da Vinci today.
This is the Mona Lisa, an actual painting
that exists in our world and on this wall.
It's Mona Lisa's enigmatic character
that draws people in.
Like all women, you simply can't tell
what's going on in her head.
Just looking at her
prompts so many questions.
Who is she? What's she smiling about?
Is she holding a balloon
between her knees?
And if so, what color is it?
Has she got a boyfriend? What's his name?
What's between his knees,
and how can we find out?
The answer is we can't.
And that's why people
keep returning every year
to gaze upon her and wonder,
then stop wondering and go home.
As well as looking all right,
"Da Vinci's work demonstrated mastery
of the trailblazing techniques
of the age," it says here.
Before the Renaissance,
other people's paintings
were in a sort of wonky 2D.
That's because artists
had no sense of perspective.
A bit like my mate Paul,
who punched a waiter in a TGI Friday's
for dropping his banoffee pie.
Just look at this 14th-century painting
of Jesus having his fateful tea party.
The dimensions are all wrong.
The room's squashed up,
so it looks like it's happening
in the lid of a cardboard box.
Jesus is twice as big as the others,
so it looks like he's enjoying
an intimate dinner with some school boys.
Not a good look.
And what are those? Bowls or seashells?
It's just shoddy craftsmanship.
Absolutely disgraceful.
Shouldn't even be in a museum.
But da Vinci's reboot of the same painting
is a different story.
He knew how to perspective
the fuck out of things.
Look at the angles of the walls
in The Last Supper and the table there.
You almost feel like you could crawl
inside it and betray Jesus yourself.
Perspective was
a huge leap forward for human art,
on a par with the release
of Crash Bandicoot centuries later.
There's no denying the Renaissance
was a pretty big deal for civilization.
Just how important it was
is for experts to decide.
Which was more culturally significant,
the Renaissance
or "Single Ladies" by Beyoncé?
They both have their period
and they both have their time.
Um
Beyoncé I'm rather fond of,
but what the Renaissance
was trying to do
was to reform culture as a whole,
and whatever Beyoncé does, I don't think
she's quite got that ambition.
So, what, the work
of a few straight white men
just blows Beyoncé out of the water?
Is that what you're saying, on camera?
The Renaissance
might have been expanding minds,
but without programs
like this around to educate them,
people were still largely ignorant
about the planet they were living on.
Ask a medieval peasant where
America was and you'd get a blank look.
Or, worse still, the plague.
That's because to them,
the world map looked like this,
a garbled mass of the countries
they'd discovered so far,
all squashed together,
with America nowhere to be seen.
But one man changed all that:
Italian sailor and detective
Christopher Colombo.
Colombo thought that if he sailed
off the edge of the map,
he'd reappear on the other side
like Pac-Man.
It would be a shortcut to India,
and he'd shake off any ghosts on his tail.
It was a huge risk.
If Colombo was right,
he'd be a millionaire.
If he was wrong, he'd be a laughingstock.
But a dead one.
And he could live with that,
which is why he set sail.
Colombo failed to find India,
but his ship eventually
bumped into the New World,
Planet Earth Part Two, aka America.
And before long,
others were following in his wake.
This is Plymouth.
Gathered here in 1620 was a group
of pilgrims who yearned for a better life.
Which isn't surprising because,
like I say, this is Plymouth.
The Pilgrims leapt into their water
mobile, or boat, the Starship Mayflower
and bravely sailed across
this drawing of the Atlantic Ocean
to arrive on the other side,
still in Plymouth.
They must have been devastated.
Luckily, it turned out this Plymouth
wasn't the one they'd just left.
At first, the European colonists
found life in the New World hard.
Luckily, some Native Americans
taught them how to grow corn
and where to fish.
In exchange, the colonists
introduced the Native Americans
to smallpox.
The settlers never forgot what
the Native Americans had done for them,
although they did ignore it
when they massacred them years later.
While the New World
was undergoing massive change,
a controversial breakthrough
was brewing in the Old World.
It's the early 1600s,
and this stupidly dressed scientist
is about to change the way
mankind sees itself forever.
His name is Galileo,
one of the few figures in history
to become so famous,
they're known by just one name.
Like Churchill, Pepsi or Garfield.
Galileo's full name was
Galileo Figaro Magnifico, wasn't it?
I'm not sure that's right. I don't know
That's what it says
in "Dominican Rhapsody."
Are you thinking of "Bohemian Rhapsody"?
What was his name then?
Well, as far as I'm aware,
his name was Galileo Galilei.
- Galileo Galilei?
- Yes.
That's like me being called
Philomena Philomenei.
Actually, I quite like that.
Galileo invented a telescope so powerful,
he could watch people
getting changed on the Sun.
Bloody hell.
This makes everything look massive.
Have you had a go on this yet?
It's amazing.
How did you do that?
Are you the real Galileo or an actor one?
Was the real one busy?
Galileo's astronomical smart arsery
led him to a discovery so shocking,
the Pope shat his hat off.
According to the Old Testament,
the Sun goes around the Earth,
not the other way around.
So as far as the church was concerned,
Galileo was calling the Bible a liar.
[Philomena] Rather than overreact,
they did the Christian thing
by accusing him of heresy
and finding him guilty
in a corrupt show trial.
Galileo was sentenced to spend
the rest of his life under house arrest
on a planet
with the Sun spinning around it.
The church thought the Sun
went round the Earth,
but Galileo thought
the Earth went round the Sun.
Whose side are we on here?
We are most definitely on Galileo's side,
as I think the church is today.
Is it possible they were both right and
the Sun and Earth go round each other?
That would keep everyone happy.
Can we just agree on that?
If only he'd invented
some kind of immortality engine
instead of his pointless telescope,
Galileo might have lived
to see his ideas accepted.
Sadly, he simply wasn't that clever.
Like science, the world of philosophy
was also expanding,
thanks to massive thinkers like this man.
Who was Jim Des Cartes?
Well, I don't know
who Jim Des Cartes might be,
but I do know that René Descartes
is often thought of
as the founder of modern philosophy.
What did he mean
by "I think therefore I am"?
Descartes meant that
self-awareness,
self-consciousness,
is the defining feature of human identity.
So hang on, if I think therefore I am,
what about other people?
Do they think therefore they am?
How can I tell
if they're thinking therefore they am?
Or am I just thinking
they think therefore they am,
but actually they're not real
and I'm only thinking they am?
Are you thinking
therefore you am right now?
Well, I wouldn't want to say that
my existence is dependent upon my thought,
but that is not the claim
that Descartes wants to make.
Is it possible to think
you're someone else?
Like, if I thought really hard
that I was Eddie Murphy,
could I eventually become him?
If I did become him, would he become me
or would he just disappear?
Did Des Cartes ever cover this stuff?
No. That's not a topic that Descartes
is covering as far as I'm aware.
Why not?
Descartes inspired
an intellectual movement
known as the Enlightenment,
during which metrosexual elitists
published essays
that expanded humankind's horizons
in a manner that will go unmatched
until the 1989 release of Belgian
techno anthem "Pump Up the Jam."
[techno music playing]
Pump up the jam, pump it up ♪
While your feet are stomping ♪
And the jam is pumping ♪
Look ahead, the crowd is jumping ♪
Pump it up a little more ♪
Get the party going
On the dance floor ♪
See, 'cause that's
Where the party's at ♪
And you'll find out if you do that ♪
I want a place to stay ♪
Get your booty
On the floor tonight ♪
Make my day ♪
I want a place to stay ♪
Get your booty
On the floor tonight ♪
The man trapped inside this painting
is Enlightenment philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
a name so French, he might as well
have been called Pierre Baguette,
but wasn't.
Which is why I didn't call him that.
Rousseau wrote, "Man is free
but is everywhere in chains."
He dreamed of a new society in which
people were masters of their own destiny.
It was the same dream that was tempting
colonists to the New World in droves
and boats.
After arriving in America to forge a life
of honest, hard work and toil,
many of these colonists quickly discovered
they couldn't be arsed,
so they stole people from Africa
and made them do it instead.
You might think these were precisely
the people Rousseau had been talking about
when he said mankind needed
to throw off its chains.
But they weren't.
Like many humanists,
he'd found a clever loophole.
By not thinking of slaves as human,
he was free to not give a shit.
As luck would have it, around this time,
the colonists started
getting interested in freedom.
Although as luck wouldn't have it,
it wasn't the slaves' freedom
they were interested in, but their own.
The British colonies were ruled
by king and line drawing George III.
But the relationship between old England
and the New World was getting frosty.
What started the tension between
the British and the Americans?
Was it because you say cookies
and we say biscuits
and you say sidewalk and we say pavement?
Because I find in a relationship,
it's those little things
that start to grate after a while.
[American accent] It was worse than that.
Britain decided they were going
to tax the colonies
and this hadn't happened before.
So it was a disagreement
over money, basically.
It's like the situation
between me and my ex, Sean.
Uh, when we used to get takeaway,
or takeout, as you call it,
um, sometimes, you know, he would
always insist that we go halves
and yet he would want to buy things
like onion bhajis, which he knows I hate,
and they made his breath stink.
- Mm.
- So, but I had to pay for half of that.
That doesn't seem fair to me.
Does it to you?
Put that way, no.
No. And that's from a professor, Sean.
Finally, in Boston in 1773,
a group of colonists decided
they'd had enough.
So when the people in Boston
got angry with the British,
why did they just hold a prissy Tea Party
instead of having a proper fight
like British men would?
Why has there always been this big
cowardly streak in the Americans,
even to this day?
Well, the only cowardly streak
in that, I suppose,
is that they dressed
themselves up as Indians
and no one said who their names were.
But would you voluntarily,
when you didn't have to, go to jail?
It depends what facilities
they had, I think.
Disrespecting our tea was one thing,
but an even nastier slap
in the tits was to come.
In 1776, the leaders
of the 13 colonies decided
that they didn't want to be called
British anymore, but Americans.
This straight, white supergroup
known as the Founding Fathers
drafted the most famous
breakup text in history,
the Declaration of Independence.
All the men you see here
became idols if you're American.
Otherwise, they're just not all that.
[Philomena] It led to all-out war
between American and British.
Because no one
had invented camouflage yet,
the British troops of the time
wore bright red coats
and were consequently shot
in their thousands, while looking amazing.
This painting depicts
one of the war's most pivotal events:
George Washington
crossing the Delaware River.
As you can see, he had to stand up
for the whole journey
because he hadn't reserved a seat.
He didn't fall in,
but he also didn't help with the rowing,
which must have been annoying.
Eventually, Washington won,
becoming America's first president,
the single most revered role in the world,
until 2016.
Washington and the other founding daddies
wrote the Constitution,
an instruction manual
for their new country,
containing some of the most influential
political concepts ever.
I read somewhere that America
isn't just a country, but an idea.
But it is just a country, isn't it?
Well, it was founded under an idea,
so it's organized around
has always been organized around the idea
that it's a land of liberty for everyone.
Yeah, but, like,
having a sandwich, that's an idea.
Painting your bicycle blue,
that's an idea.
Going that's an idea.
America is just a place.
The American Revolution
sent shockwaves around the globe,
not to mention the planet.
It hit especially hard in France,
where the common man, or "homme,"
had to scrabble about in the muck
while the rich had got so posh
they'd evolved frills.
Soon, the average Jacques had enough
of their ruler, King Louis XVI,
and his identical wives,
Marie and Toinette,
who enjoyed lavish lifestyles while
the poor were forced to survive on cake.
Finally, in 1789,
it exploded into topless revolution.
The poor toppled the king
and invented a machine that would
rid the world of royalty forever.
The guillotine was specifically designed
to be the most humane way
to decapitate someone
in front of a jeering crowd.
You simply fed a royal, headfirst,
through the chopping hole here.
Then the razor-sharp blade up there
would drop down and slice their head off,
sending it sailing away
from their neck and body.
At that point,
they probably thought they'd escaped.
But any sense of victory was short lived,
because moments later,
they'd land face first into
this horribly coarse wicker basket.
If you look, there's no padding in there,
so the fall would have caused
extensive bruising
and maybe even concussion.
I suppose it could have been worse.
They could have made you
stick your head out of a carriage
and driven really close to a building.
Even so, being guillotined
would have had a huge impact on anyone.
But especially King Louis.
With his head gone, he could never
breed or wear a crown again
and was almost certainly unemployable
in any other line of work.
Perhaps that's why he chose
to withdraw from public life completely
shortly after it happened.
The French Revolution
wasn't the first time
the masses had risen up against the elite,
and it may not be the last.
A lot of revolutions seem to be about
poor people overthrowing the rich.
Do you think billionaires like Elon Musk
should be worried
about getting guillotined?
I think that the French Revolution
certainly made a lot of people
who were powerful
very, very worried about their existence.
I suppose Elon Musk could invent a machine
that chops his own head off electronically
before the mob arrives.
- You know much more about this than I do.
- I'm just guessing.
Soon, France decided it needed
a strong man to take charge of things,
and they got one in the form
of the Emperor Napoleon.
No relation to the Emperor Penguin
as far as we can ascertain at this time.
Napoleon did a load of massive wars
on land and sea,
which remain far too expensive
to properly re-create
in historical documentaries to this day.
[guns firing, men shouting]
Laying sound effects
over a painting of a battle like this
gives some idea
of what it might have been like,
but there was still
a key ingredient missing.
A soundtrack of classical music
was the only thing
that would really bring
these Napoleonic wars to life.
[classical music playing]
[guns firing]
See? Loads better.
And luckily, classical music was being
perfected elsewhere in Europe
by a composer called Beethoven.
Did Beethoven have an actual
full-sized horse living inside his face?
Sorry, I've misphrased that.
I mean, was Beethoven good at music?
Yeah. He's considered to be the best
composer of Western classical music ever.
Beethoven wrote that song that goes
[Beethoven's "Fifth"]
Dum-dum-dum-dum ♪
Dum-dum-dum-dum ♪
What do those lyrics mean?
Um Well, it's a really strong
orchestral motif.
It's just the word "dum"
over and over again.
Is it a dig at his audience,
or is it German for something?
With the Beethoven symphonic music,
it's all just instruments.
So there are no words
to these pieces at all.
No lyrics? How are we supposed to know
what it's about if it doesn't have lyrics?
It's literally meaningless.
Despite enjoying great success
with his pointless tunes,
Beethoven faced huge
personal challenges in his career.
Is it true that in the final years
of his working life, Beethoven was dead?
Well, he was deaf for most of his life.
No, dead.
- Dead?
- Yeah.
No.
The producer wrote it in the notes.
It's definitely here. Let me see.
"In his later years,
Beethoven was profoundly dead."
Profoundly deaf. D-E-A-F.
Obviously he went deaf when he died.
But was he deaf when he was still alive?
Yes, he was profoundly.
Yeah, he was profoundly.
But not dead?
He wasn't dead when he was alive?
No, no. Not.
So how did he write the music
when he was dead?
[Philomena] On 26th March 1827,
Beethoven did roll over and his genius
was thought to be lost forever.
Until now.
Silicon Valley boffins
have re-created his mind
and installed it into this smart speaker,
the B8-Hoven Smart Home+.
Let's see if it works.
B8-Hoven, compose a new symphony.
- [speaker, German accent] Was war das?
- Compose a new symphony.
Where am I?
What? Just compose your thing.
Mein Gott, it is dark in here.
Why am I speaking English?
I cannot see my legs.
Just play my Friday night playlist.
Playing Friday night playlist.
[Ini Kamoze singing]
Why am I doing this?
Mein Gott im Himmel, kill me!
Here comes the Hotstepper ♪
Murderer ♪
I'm the lyrical gangster ♪
[Philomena] As we've seen,
in just a few hundred years,
humankind had undergone a series
of massive cultural
and political revolutions.
Next time,
I'll show you an even bigger revolution:
an Industrial Revolution
forged in steel, steam, sweat,
planes, trains, automobiles
and planes a gain.
People tried for years
to make an aeroplane.
Why were we so interested
in conquering the sky?
There's nothing up there.
There's not even anywhere to sit.
[theme music playing]