Fleabag

Fleabag, BBC Three, review

Have you seen Fleabag yet? If not, here's the one-word review: brilliant.

Why the riskiest TV comes straight from the stage

Screenwriters often find themselves in a straitjacket - but comedy shows written for the theatre have free rein to be as foul-mouthed and foul-minded as they like. The world needs more of it.

BBC3 comedy Fleabag is delightfully daring

If you find jokes about anal sex and wanking to Barack Obama funny, BBC comedy Fleabag is for you. Based on actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge's solo Edinburgh fringe show about a sex-obsessed young woman whose life is going nowhere, the BBC Three series has been rising the ranks on iPlayer since June.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge interview

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

Review: Fleabag, BBC Three, episode 5

It has taken me a while to get round to writing about the fifth episode of Fleabag. I don't know what the journalistic equivalent of being speechless is but that's how I felt after watching it. It's not quite the same as writer's block, it's just when you see something that is so visceral and powerful on a gut level as this it is hard to find the right way of expressing your response to it.

Great TV sitcoms that started at the Edinburgh Fringe

Here are seven sitcoms that would never have made it to our screens if it weren't for the Fringe.

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.