Philomena Cunk has been one of the most popular elements of Charlie Brooker’s Wipe programmes so it was only a matter of time before she landed a programme of her own. Some bright spark at the BBC has chosen to let the gloriously ill-informed Cunk loose on Shakespeare in this one-off special.

You know you are in decidedly unsafe hands when Cunk gormlessly explains that she only started studying Shakespeare when she started making the programme in which she was going to set out to prove that “the king of the bards” was “not just a bald man who could write with feathers”.

No expense has been spared packing Cunk off to “Stratford and Avon” where she meets various experts, getting one of them particularly irate by wanting to wear white gloves like Simon Schama to flick through an antique book. Bit of a chink in the internal logic here though. I don’t think Cunk would be familiar with the work of Schama, but who cares about internal logic when her idiot savant stance is so funny,

The technique of interviewing experts while knowing less than nothing about the subject is hardly new – Ali G does casts a shadow over her straight-faced encounters – but Cunk (alias comedian Diane Morgan) is so committed to her character it is impossible not to laugh at her antics. In one memorable scene she starts playing with a banana while Simon Russell Beale delivers Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy a few inches away.

Of course this is pretty bonkers but it mostly works brilliantly. There are a few clunky Cunk lines but there are also some brilliant ones. I for one will now always think of the gory Titus Andronicus as “a posh Friday the 13th”. Give Cunk a series. And give Barry Shitpeas a one-off.

More pictures and info here.