Oh God, give me more of this perfect television
Fleabag BBC1, Monday Derry Girls Channel 4, Tuesday Home Of The Year RTÉ One, Tuesday
EVERY once in a while, we are blessed with a television programme that, from the off, feels like a classic, something so perfectly formed it will stand the test not only of our time, but of the ages. Fleabag came to an end on Monday night after just 12 episodes spread over two series and it bowed out with an episode so breathtakingly perfect, I immediately watched it again. If you’ve never seen it, it’s the story of a very middleclass London woman, the titular Fleabag (she has a refreshingly robust view of sexuality but a lot of emotional hang-ups), and her decidedly offbeat family.
This series opened with an episode set almost entirely at a restaurant table as the family gathered to celebrate the engagement of Fleabag’s widowed father to the horrible Godmother, played with ferociously hilarious bile by Olivia Colman, a woman who literally can do no wrong in my eyes.
The meal turned into a physical brawl after some of the family’s darkest secrets came tripping out, and set the tone for what followed – because also at the dinner was the Irish priest who was set marry the couple. Over the weeks, Fleabag’s friendship with him deepened and, at the end of the fifth episode, they ended up sleeping together.
In any other writer’s hands, the finale would have seen him leave the priesthood and the two of them skip into the sunset, but Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who both writes and stars, is far too smart for that. In a scene that would break your heart, the two sat at a bus stop and she looked at him wondering what he would choose, before saying: ‘It’s God, isn’t it?’ And he just said: ‘Yeah.’
The show is marked by WallerBridge’s frequent looks to camera and, by extension, to us watching at home. When they parted, she walked away and gave us just a little wave that said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be OK’.
As for the writing, well, I’m not sure you’d ever hear better than the speech written by WallerBridge for the priest as he conducted the marriage ceremony.
‘Love is awful. It’s awful,’ he said. ‘It’s painful. It’s frightening. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. It makes you selfish. It makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do.
‘It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there. Love isn’t some
thing that weak people do. Being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of hope. I think what they mean is, when you find somebody that you love, it feels like hope.’
Like every other word in the show, it was perfect. Every performance was sublime. Every situation was raw, honest and true, and it all made for ground-breaking, magnificent television. Just polish next year’s BAFTAs. They’re going nowhere else.
The second series of Derry Girls also came to an end this week and while there were occasional sophomore disappointments along the way, Lisa McGee is another writer far too smart to see comedy only as a vehicle for laughs when darker realities can also be introduced.
In the final episode, the ‘wee English fella’, James, was to be taken home by his mother, leaving Erin, Clare, Orla and Michelle bereft. As the four gathered at the front of the crowd to see Bill Clinton address the people of Derry in 1995, James returned, shouting down to them from the city wall: ‘I am a Derry girl!’ McGee, never one to miss a trick, had a voice off camera say: ‘You’re a f**in’ p **** , that’s what you are.’
Reunited and hugging, the five strode off and passed an electrical shop with TV sets in the window, and the camera lingered on Clinton saying: ‘And so I ask you to build on the opportunity you have before you; to believe that the future can be better than the past; to work together because you have so much more to gain by working together than by drifting apart.’
With the threat to the peace process posed by a hard Brexit, the line took on a new immediacy, and McGee again showed that when it comes to deft fusion of comedy and reality, she is peerless.
Good and all as these two shows were, though, the funniest moment of the week came when a manor in Belfast, once the home of the boss of Harland & Wolff, won first prize in Home Of The Year.
I’m not taking away from it, because it was a spectacular refurbishment by Ciara Denvir and family, but it must have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, which gave it a head start over my own favourite, a Co. Galway cottage owned by interior designer Dee Noone and her husband Evan, which used dramatic colour to make every space zing with freshness and life.
What the entire series showed, though, was the effort and passion all of the contestants put into developing extraordinary spaces that brought peace and calm. Making a good home is a labour of love, and when you find the right place, whether that’s a cottage or a castle, it really does feel like hope.
Fleabag Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s superbly written series is so perfect it will stand the test of time