Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Phoebe Waller-Bridge interview

Fleabag actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge talks karaoke - the belters, the movers, and the famous actress who is amazing at it.

A few episodes in, there's still time to catch up with the strange, bleak, hilarious Fleabag, lurking on iPlayer. Written by and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Crashing), the eponymous heroine speaks straight to camera, and is, by turns, cynical, playful, impulsive, bitter, haunted and vulnerable, as she has casual sex with inadequate men, masturbates to Obama speeches, worries that her anus is super-sized, runs her financially ludicrous cafe business (Fleabag has the least realistic sitcom lifestyle since the cast of Friends), sponges from her uptight sister (Sian Clifford), and steals stuff from her odious stepmother (Olivia Colman, dripping passive-aggressive).

There are inevitable comparisons with Sharon Horgan and Lena Dunham, but Waller-Bridge seems determined to plough her own eldritch and mischievous furrow. Last week Fleabag attended a ghastly "Female-only 'Breath of Silence'" retreat, coming across her bank manager (Hugh Dennis) at his own grisly "Better-Man" event ("I'm just a very disappointing man").

At times, Fleabag, still grieving, flashes back to her dead best friend, at which point she's exposed as the walking, talking weeping sore she truly is. Fleabag isn't perfect (this episode was the lightest on belly laughs so far) but it's witty, textured, poignant and offbeat - a hidden gem it would be a pity to miss.

Fleabag: a hilarious sitcom about terrible people

Phoebe Waller-Bridge's sitcom is full of people who are defeated and unlikable - including her own character who masturbates to Barack Obama speeches. But it's utterly riveting.

Review: Fleabag, BBC Three, episode 3

There is a hint of some character development towards the end of the third episode of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's excellent series. Jogging through a graveyard Fleabag suddenly seems to see the world in a different way. Could she be heading for a happy ending?

Review: Fleabag, BBC Three, episode 2

It is sometimes said that you can't engage with a comedy with a lead character you can't like in some way, though that never held back Fawlty, Rigsby or Brent. And despite the fact that Fleabag is clearly messed up in umpteen ways - broken home, porn-obsessed, dead friend - she is hardly sympathetic. But gradually one does warm to her. She is fragile, damaged and just looking for love in all the wrong places. You can't really hold that against her.

Fleabag is an unflinching, clever look at tricky youth

Head to iPlayer now and learn to love an anti-hero who is just as clueless, skint, horny and selfish as the rest of us.

Fleabag: modern life is rubbish is BBC3's newest comedy

Greedy. Perverted. Selfish. Apathetic. Cynical. Depraved. Just some of the adjectives that the titular Fleabag uses to describe her life in the opening episode of this new BBC3 sitcom and over the course of the half hour, she definitely manages to tick the boxes on all of the above.

Here's why you need to be watching Fleabag

You'll spend a lot of time empathetically wincing and howling at the audacity of Fleabag's latest move, but the occasional emotional moments - such as the aforementioned tragedy - still creep up on you, to cast a small, but often present, shadow over things.

Fleabag: a gloriously rude update of Bridget Jones

Is eye-popping female sex comedy your sort of thing? If not, best look away now.

TV preview: Fleabag, BBC Three

Why do some TV comedies work while others fail to hit the mark? Don't ask me. If I knew I'd have a better job than this. Is it the writing? Is it the casting? Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote and starred in C4 houseshare comedy Crashing and now BBC Three's Fleabag, and while the first one whiffed a bit the latest one is the real deal.