A flea in your ear
Fleabag
Noun INFORMAL a dirty or shabby person or animal, typically one infested with eas.
There are no eas in Fleabag. Not that I’ve noticed anyway. But there are so many other entertaining distractions, not least a woman consumed with self-loathing, a priest who is not what you might expect (no, not even that) and recent Oscar winner, Olivia Colman, being an utter wagon. What more could you want? OK maybe eas but they might be in there too.
e brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the face of Fleabag (also creator and writer). Waller-Bridge is also the brains behind last year’s Killing Eve, the quirky spin on the female assassin thing which began brilliantly but somewhat lost its way in a corner of Moscow that will forever be a lm set in South London. But Fleabag is the real deal: di cult to de ne, boldly unique and hard to beat (or at least hard to beat if it was in a competition with another show which it was and lost at the 2017 BAFTAs but what do they know).
e rst coming of Fleabag was discreet, slipping without fanfare on the BBC iPlayer in 2016. But its brilliance could not be cocooned for long. Soon everyone wanted to be a Fleabag (or have one, the must-have fashion accessory of 2017), especially those hadn’t watched the show apart from a few clips online. Here was Waller-Bridge doing her Peep Show thing, breaking down the fourth wall, and being trumpeted as the British Lena Dunham ( Girls) even though she doesn’t look one iota like her (but what do TV critics know?).
Everyone (even TV critics) knows that the best TV comedy right now is being written by women. ere’s Lisa McGee ( Derry Girls), Sharon Horgan ( Catastrophe), Roisin Conaty ( Gameface) and eresa May ( Deal or No Deal or some show like that). I’m not sure what that exactly means except that if you are a TV comedy commissioning editor don’t give any jobs to guys - well maybe just to the good guys.
Fleabag is funnier than it sounds. It is also funnier than its meaning (which we looked up, see top). Like Seinfeld it is populated with a gallery of unlikable characters who for that very reason are so much more interesting. e keenly anticipated second season, which kicks o this week, features some new faces including a priest, played by Andrew Scott who was cast for his “dangerous energy” (as P W-B put it) and whose character was shaped very much to t the actor. But not as perfect as that of Waller-Bridge’s greatest creation which started life on stage.
Fleabag: funnier than it sounds. But I said that already, didn’t I?
(Donal O’Donoghue)
Fleabag is on BBC One, Monday