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COMEDY SERIES: WILDLY ADDICTIVE
No-filter woman, known only as Fleabag, navigates life and love in London.
If you do not know who Phoebe Waller-Bridge is, then you obviously haven’t yet watched Fleabag, the wildly inventive BBC comedy series that’s available on Amazon Prime.
Based on Waller-Bridge’s 2013 one-woman play of the same name, the series is a day-to-day account of a dry-witted no-filter woman, known only as Fleabag, as she navigates life and love in London.
In spite of her laugh-out-loud soliloquy and bravado, you cannot shake the feeling that our protagonist is struggling to cope with tragedy as she purposely rejects anyone who tries to assist her or, heaven forbid, get intimate. Matthew Gilbert of the Boston
Globe summed it up best when he said: “Fleabag reminded me of the brave aspects of many of the sad clowns we’ve encountered over the years, who use the tools they know best in order to cope.
“They’re in a battle with grief, despair, loneliness and worse, and they refuse to succumb.”
With only two seasons – the first having already aired in 2016 – the show has critics’ tongues wagging with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 100% and an 8.6 out of 10 IMDb score. “The script is razor-sharp and fizzes with a daring, deadpan wit. Watching Waller-Bridge’s performance, it becomes all too clear she must have written the comedy,” said inews.
co.uk critic Daisy Wallace in a recent article.
“With a quiver of those red lips, she knows exactly when to drop a line about doing a ‘flash poo’ in Pret a Manger, or make an awkward comment about sexual harassment to a male interviewer.” And to prove just how awesome the series, its scripting and actors are, Fleabag pulled one of the biggest surprises of the night at the recent Emmys, when Waller-Bridge took the statue for Lead Actress in a Comedy and the show won for Outstanding Comedy Series. “It’s so wonderful and reassuring to know that a dirty, pervy, angry and messed-up woman can make it to the Emmys,” Waller-Bridge quipped during the awards. Sharing Waller-Bridge’s sentiments, GQ UK reporter Allis Brennan describes Fleabag as being sexually uninhibited, morally perverse and really quite emotionally screwed up.
“You’re going to be a little bit scared of her but don’t worry, that’s her thing,” says Brennan.
Co-produced by the BBC and Amazon, some anti-Emmy viewers have charged that the show – as great as it is – would not have been considered were it not a collaboration with America’s Amazon.
Others, like myself, however, would like to believe that the fact it’s the first British show to win best comedy series may just have something to do with the changing TV landscape and non-British viewer appreciation of shows coming out of England.
Either way, Fleabag is a winner and well worth watching.