Series Despicable Everyone
Have you ever seen the British sitcom Miranda? Well Fleabag is Miranda, had Miranda turned insane and evil. If you haven't seen Miranda, then Fleabag is a dark sitcom about a nameless London woman (the Fleabag) who lives the life of a modern day rake: an existence of constant debauchery, dishonesty, theft, and indulgence. She shares the experience with you, the audience, by constantly breaking the fourth wall to let you in on secrets, or just to share a conspiratorial smirk.
The central theme of Fleabag is fronts. Everyone has a front. Whilst Fleabag has a lot of negative qualities that should make her utterly unlikable, we gradually learn that she is barely any worse than the people around her, and her true flaw is that she is can't fake a front as well as everyone else. She pretends to run a successful small business, tolerates her humourless sister, makes time for a histrionic boyfriend, feigns interest in the lives of her various other partners, and lies to herself that she can cope with the grief and guilt around her dead best friend. No one is really convinced by her performance, and she is despised for it.
Meanwhile, she possesses an uncanny talent to see straight through the fronts of everyone else, right through to the ugly, bitter cores boiling away underneath. She knows these people aren't any better than her, and laughs at them for thinking otherwise. Her chief enemy is "the Godmother", a seemingly innocent and friendly woman who has wormed her way into her life. The Godmother might as well be Satan. National treasure Olivia Coleman plays her to perfection, both the doting friendly face and the domineering, hateful creature lurking behind it.
Fleabag is frequently funny, savage and sad all at the same time. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a great gurner, and whilst I feel stupid for recommending a tv show on the ability of an actor to pull funny faces, Phoebe Waller-Bridge pulls really funny faces. Fleabag also has the best comedic editing of any sitcom I've ever seen, able to snap between scenes, mid sentence, with all the sharpness and style of an Edgar Wright movie. Give it a watch.
Series Unworthy of all this praise
It was only before the 2019 Emmys that I heard about Fleabag, reading that it was the favourite for a win. The same day of the ceremony, I decided to give it a shot.
By the next day, I was sure that was one of the worst decisions I had ever made.
Let's start with the positives: Phoebe Waller-Bridge (who before this I had only known for voicing a very funny droid in Solo) has much charisma, screen presence and conveys very well all the emotions her character goes through, giving a performance that is probably the greatest reason why I committed to watching this to the end. There's also an adorable guinea pig. Because otherwise, Waller-Bridge delivers "comedy drama" scripts that fail on both accounts, thinking vulgarity is automatically funny (the very first scene is an anal sex joke), and making it hard to care about a cast of characters either unlikable (starting with the show's "namesake" - she, like many others, doesn't even get a name - an oversexed woman that is constantly spewing quips either dirty or supposedly clever at the camera; though Olivia Colman's Godmother manages to be an even worse person) or flat. For every moment that worked (the very rare good jokes, a few good dramatic moments such as the "Fleabag"'s monologue in a retreat and her confession to The Priest), there were three that made me think "why am I still watching this?".
Ever since the displeasure of watching this show, I saw two others that made me think "this is Fleabag done right": Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 (the despicable protagonist manages to be endearing, and the whole thing is very funny, helped by a big contrast: instead of Fleabag's "relatable" approach with ordinary people, it embraces the farce and brings in weird situations and characters) and Russian Doll (an oversexed, obnoxious woman evolves into a good person). Because as is, it was just an overrated and unfunny waste of six hours. If you want a good comedy show on Amazon Prime Video, watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel instead.