Fleabag
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September 14, 2016, 7:37 am
Filed under: TV reviews | Tags: Amazon Productions, BBC, Bill Paterson, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, London, Olivia Colman, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, TV
Filed under: TV reviews | Tags: Amazon Productions, BBC, Bill Paterson, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, London, Olivia Colman, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, TV
Fleabag is a darkly humorous sitcom created and written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Having originally appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as a stage monologue, Amazon financed production of a six-part series, and the BBC picked it up for distribution. It’s about a woman who can’t quite cope with life in London after the recent death of her best friend. To “help” her along her terrible and squalid path, is her father, an ineffectual man who moved in with her awful – though very talented – godmother, just after her mother died. And her sister, a painfully uptight workaholic married to a slime bag.
Each character in Fleabag, including our heroine, is unpleasant, defeated and unhappy. Except for the dead best friend, Boo, whom we meet through regular flashbacks. This doesn’t sound like a good review, and I can only imagine how difficult pitching this idea to a TV exec would be, but Waller-Bridge has created something truly unforgettable here. The script is full of acerbic one-liners that will leave you breathless, and the characters are hypnotic. It’s perfectly cast, with especially stellar performances by Olivia Colman and Bill Paterson. But Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag is magnetic in her savage self-loathing.
The first word that came to my head when I finished watching the series was “Wow.” Note the period, no exclamation mark. If I had to describe Fleabag in four words, I’d choose Harsh. Poignant. Surprising. Funny. Definitely worth watching, but not for the faint of heart.
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Victoria Jelinek 
Excellent review—-now I am intrigued to watch it—mainly because of the information about it being a monologue before it became a series. Important and interesting information! Thank you!
Comment by starlingdarling September 14, 2016 @ 1:37 pmThank you for your note and comment! I feel sure you will appreciate it…
Comment by victoriakjelinek September 15, 2016 @ 7:38 am