Fleabag

It seems I’ve been going around handing out national treasure status to people willy nilly.  So let’s just recap those who have been adorned with this accolade so far on Just One More Episode.  I’m pretty sure I would have said this about Julia Davis for her work in Nighty Night (and Gavin & Stacey), plus there’s Michaela Coel from Chewing Gum.  Surely there were others, but I’m not about to read through eighty-something blogposts to check.  And it doesn’t even matter, anyway, as we are today adding another name to the list.  Step forward and wink at us cheekily, Phoebe Waller-Bridge.  There are three reasons she could be here.  The first is Killing Eve, but I haven’t actually watched that yet, as I kind of find assassins a bit unappealing (it’s a meh career, like being a surveyor) and, although it’s trapped in my iPhone on the iPlayer app (ha – two things starting with a little i) I just haven’t got around to it.  She also did Crashing, but I haven’t seen that either…  No, this week, we are doing Fleabag.

We’ll skip over my viewing’s genesis here (a friend literally asked if anyone had seen it, and I immediately died inside because I hadn’t), and get straight into why it’s great.  Fleabag is unflinchingly honest.  The opening scenes of episode one, series one revolve around our (anti-)heroine, Fleabag, actually called Kate, as she receives what is essentially a booty call.  She bends over backwards to accommodate her gentleman caller, rushing to get her body ready for his standards before finally opening the door and putting just as much trouble into pretending the whole preparation performance was no trouble at all.  I was floored by the honesty.  It felt ballsy and painful, laying bare the fact that, even in 2016, women were still busting a gut to perpetuate the myths men expect of them.  The issue was treated with even more transparency, thanks to Waller-Bridge’s pieces to camera.  That’s right, just like Miranda’s end-of-pier winks, Fleabag breaks the fourth wall and interacts directly with the viewer.  We are let in on her secrets, which in turn boosts her universality through intimacy and proximity.

But why is Kate called Fleabag?  It seems to be a mixture of her lack of self-esteem and her conviction that she probably isn’t a good person.  I don’t know about you, but I sometimes look at myself and conclude that I am a bit of a shit.  The other week, when returning from dinner with friends, a large man had collapsed in the street.  Some Chinese tourists seemed to be on the case with wrestling his gargantuan frame from the concrete and A&E was just around the corner.  My friends were desperate to stop and help, but I refused to break my stride (I wanted to go home and watch Netflix).  My pals were appalled at my assertions that it was probably the man’s own fault, the Chinese seemed to be coping and, as mentioned, A&E was just around the corner.  Well, like me, and like all of us, Fleabag seems to end up doing bad things.  The first series gradually reveals in flashback the poor choices she has made, costing her dearly and leading to her current predicament.

There’s laugh-out-loud comedy, driven by the awful characters that constitute her family.  But, because of the above, this is only ever a knife edge from being sliced into desperate sadness.  The show’s origins as a one-woman show blow my mind – what could have been packed into those ten minutes which Waller-Bridge first produced after a friend challenged her?  And now look!  She’s a few months younger than me but has achieved about 15 times as much.  Why haven’t my friends been challenging me?  Although, I suppose they challenged me to help that fallen man and I just ignored them.  But yes, it seems the one-woman show is a rich environment for narrative brilliance.  If you’ve never seen Luisa Omielan, please do so immediately.  Or Google Tiannah Viechweg’s Carnival Queen and get gut-punched by its strength.  I’ll wait.

Fleabag, though, is an ensemble.  Sian Clifford’s performance as her older sister, Claire, rings frighteningly true.  I’m reminded of so many people who confuse happiness with success and who conflate ambition with humanity.  Claire’s expressions are electric and her conflicts with Fleabag mirror the worst parts of sisterly relations in a way never seen before.  Meanwhile, having far too much fun as the self-centred godmother-cum-future stepmother is Olivia Colman.  I’m not sure why she’s only cropping up now and wasn’t in my initial list of national treasures (see her work in Peep Show and watch out for her coming to The Crown).  Sure, she’s got an Oscar now in her downstairs cloak, but she still knows where the good writing is (I mean, in the programme, Fleabag, right; not necessarily in this sentence of this blogpost…)

Series two has just begun (praise be) and I managed to catch its first episode on my phone while flying from Innsbruck to Gatwick.  Despite the lack of sleep on a boozy work ski jolly, despite the appalling Samsung J5 headphones I am forced to use, despite the tiny iPhone screen and despite wanting to be anywhere but on an economy flight, I’m going to bandy around words like masterpiece and genius.  We open on a family dinner, with most characters as yet unreconciled from the fallout of the previous season’s climax, some months ago.  Throughout the thirty minutes, we barely leave the restaurant, the claustrophobia and tension increasing with every additional pouring of wine (by the very enthusiastic waitress, with Waller-Bridge making even an incidental character hilarious, and tragic).  The sisters end up confronting each other in the loos; a bombshell is dropped and handled with such brutality that my gasping could be heard three rows back.

So, here’s me, staggered someone can produce such telly with such consistency.  This is the bleakest black humour, with raw truths I can barely handle, yet jam-packed with LOLs, cheekiness and bad human behaviour.  Phoebe Waller-Bridge, welcome to the hall of national treasures.