Charlie Cooper writes and plays small men who take small things with complete seriousness, and he never lets us catch him finding it funny. This Country is one of the best British comedies we know; everything since has been him finding out how far Kurtan will let him go.
Fi1m perspective
Kurtan Mucklowe knows the bus timetable. He knows which bin the recycling goes in, and he treats getting it wrong as a moral failing rather than a mistake. Charlie Cooper plays him small and fussy, and not once across three series does he let us see that he thinks any of it is a joke. Kurtan turns to the documentary crew and explains, quite calmly, why his cousin Kerry is an idiot, and the calm is what makes it land.
This Country (2017–2020) is where nearly all of Cooper's reputation sits, and rightly. He created and wrote it with his sister Daisy May Cooper, after an earlier ITV pilot was dropped, and the two of them play cousins with nothing to do in a Cotswolds village and a television crew watching them do it. The camera grammar is borrowed from The Office. The people are their own, drawn from a rural life the pair knew far too well, and the show likes them, which is rarer in this format than it ought to be. We laughed hardest at Kurtan's fear of a villager called Big Mandy, whom we hear about constantly and never see, and we felt for him too, because the fear is real to him and he cannot say so on camera. The third series repeats itself a little. Two good series out of three is a fair rate.
Since then he has mostly acted for other people. Greed (2019) gave him a supporting part as Neil alongside Steve Coogan. A Confession (2019), a drama, cast him as Kevin Reape, and the casting tells you what the makers wanted: Kurtan's stillness without Kurtan's jokes. See How They Run (2022) put him back with Tom George, who directed This Country, as Dennis Corrigan. We have not reviewed these and will not judge them here. None of them is his show, and he has not yet written another one.
Charlie Cooper's Myth Country (2024) is the odd one out. He presents it himself, going round British folklore and eccentric local traditions, and the manner is Kurtan's: the slight frown, the interest in the rules of a thing and who is breaking them. Whether that is Cooper being himself or Cooper doing a character he cannot put down is a fair question, and the programme does not settle it. The subject suits him either way. A man who cared that much about the bus timetable was always going to care about why a village keeps doing the thing it has always done.
He has said it would be criminal not to revisit This Country. We would watch it. We would rather see what he writes when Kurtan is not available.
Biography
Charlie Cooper is an English actor, comedian and writer. He is best known for playing Lee 'Kurtan' Mucklowe in the BBC Three mockumentary series This Country (2017–2020), which he co-created and co-wrote with his sister Daisy May Cooper.
Born on 16 June 1989 in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, Cooper studied sports science at Exeter University before working as a model and in various jobs while developing the series with his sister. The show drew on their experiences growing up in the Cotswolds. He has since appeared in films including Greed (2019) and See How They Run (2022), and television series such as Inside No. 9 (2024) and Stath Lets Flats (2021).
Cooper has received BAFTA awards for his work on This Country, including for scripted comedy and breakthrough talent.
