Every so often, there's a show that becomes an all-consuming phenomenon that actually lives up to the hype and is every bit as special as the tidal wave of acclaim suggests. I had watched some of the first season of Fleabag before and really enjoyed it, but it wasn't until that second season that I went back to see what all the fuss was about and fell into the infinite rabbithole of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's genius. Sometimes it can be hard to navigate hype and see the wood for the trees, but I also believe that it's easy to recognise a generation defining storyteller when you see one, which is exactly what PWB established herself as here. What else can you call someone who condenses so much comedy, tragedy, smut, pain and genuine insight on the human condition into12 chapters that barely even adds up to 6 hours but hits on just about every emotion there is?
I guess the best way to start is by talking about how thematically loaded Fleabag is. There's been no shortage of "sadcoms" on the British comedy scene, but most of those shows fall short of greatness for me because they tend to call it a day when they get to the emotional sting under the jokes. It's a tense and release tactic, where comedy cuts tragedy and tragedy grounds the comedy, and it really works for something like After Life, but it also means that by its nature, that show is entirely bound by its twin aims to make you laugh and cry. Fleabag makes no such promise, instead immediately establishing that jokes and feeling exist side by side because that's just how life is. Neither of them exist to balance the other or to serve the tone, and the show is free to cover so much more ground as a result. There's a lot going on in Fleabag, a story about depression and grief and womanhood and sex and faith and redemption and failure and love and self-love and sisterly love and seeing and being seen and slowly regaining hope in both yourself and the world at large, and the way Waller-Bridge crams all of this into two six-episode seasons is frankly just mind-blowing
It sounds like a lot, and that's because it is, but the genius of Fleabag is that it knows how to dole out its insights and its laughs at the same time. Waller-Bridge knows that she's tackling well-worn themes that are going to be immediately familiar to anyone who's seen enough dramedies to know the classic beats that they hit, but she manages to provide something different by refusing to ever commit to being wholly funny or emotional. There's no setpiece here that fully grounds itself in either levity or tragedy, so the show never really feels like its maneuvering itself to switch between them, and the result is a totally seamless mastery of tone that makes Fleabag undoubtedly the best show of its kind at balancing and blending light and heavy thematic content
This is aided immeasurably by the show's style. It boils characters down to stock archetypal figures who are barely even named most of the time, and this is massively useful in grounding the audience firmly in Fleabag's perspective on the people around her. It's just us and her in this story as she guides us through a world where she struggles to really feel seen, and as a result, she struggles to truly see anyone either. Perspective is a crucial tool in this show, constantly reminding us as viewers that this story is being told by one person with a viewpoint that is specific to them, and through communicating that, the show really makes use of the technique its become most known for, that being the fourth-wall breaks. At first, it seems like a great extension of the comedy and a smart reference to the show's roots as a one-woman play, and while it absolutely is both of those things, there's a little more to it this time around. Fleabag constantly struggles to understand people or be understood, so she keeps turning to us, a captive audience who are tuning in hopes that we can make something out of this story, too. She relies on us to engage with the story as much as we do on her to tell it, and as the show goes on, Waller-Bridge allows our heroine to rely less and less on what's on the other side of the screen until she's outgrown us completely as a sign of her growth
And then there's the Hot Priest. Fleabag's first season was like a bolt of lightning, but the sophomore run did just about everything it could to improve on it; it was tighter, sharper, angrier, more tragic, more heartfelt and funnier. It added a couple of new players including Fiona Shaw and Kristen Scott-Thomas (both excellent), but if anything justified this show getting a second season and allowed the show to grow and mature into something really special, it was Andrew Scott's miraculous turn as a sexy, soulful preacher. He takes to the comedy like its second nature and his chemistry with PWB is palpable, but the real genius of adding a man of the cloth to the story was that it gave Fleabag so much more thematic ground to cover
By essentially putting the title character in a love-triangle with God, the show can break down massive concepts of redemption and purpose and the power of love to provide salvation. And if there was ever any doubt that the fourth-wall breaking was a stylistic gimmick, just look at how smoothly the priest is integrated into it. The moment where he catches her to-camera glances is small but it says so much about what it truly means to open up to another person and let them in to the carefully-controlled world you've built. It doubles down on probably the most simple but devastatingly effective point the show puts forward, that loving, and being loved, feels like an absolute miracle
Because this is, after all, a love story. It's such a bold, borderline cocky move to open a season by spelling out the main theme of the show, but it works because it's absolutely true. Fleabag is about love. Not necessarily romantic love, although again, her tryst with the Hot Priest is utterly swoon-inducing, but the idea that everyone loves and gives love. Waller-Bridge defines all of her characters by this, and even the unlikable characters are only framed as such because they lack that natural ability to convey real warmth or tenderness. It's a show about someone learning to let love in, about two sisters who love each other more than anything but don't fully understand why, about a man trapped between a blossoming romance and his total devotion to God, about a father who loves too deeply to fully be able to articulate it. She sums up in 12 episodes what most shows couldn't even do in half as many seasons, and she does it all with brutal and beautiful honesty. The Priest's homily is a celebrated scene for a reason, perfectly articulating that love is messy and painful and turns us into the worst versions of ourselves, but it matters because there's nothing more beautiful than connecting with another person
And while I've spent most of this month banging on about long-form storytelling and shows taking their time, the truth is that Fleabag is a masterpiece precisely because it does the total opposite. It prioritises speed and efficiency over slowly establishing a world of characters, but that's why it works. It has to strike fast to make an impression because otherwise the rawness of its emotional beats would totally lose their impact. It's much more cutting and immediate than the bulk of sadcoms or tragicomedies about the burdens of adulthood because it's never generous to its characters, instead forcing them to create real connections with each other because, just like in real life, that's really all we have. I love Fleabag, and I can't see that love passing anytime soon
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