The Best Show on TV Is Fleabag

Looks directly into camera: Did you really think we’d choose another show?

No, but seriously. We considered other very good series for this honor but kept coming back to Fleabag, the same way Fleabag, the character created and played by the magnificent Phoebe Waller-Bridge, keeps going back to the Priest during the perfect second season of this fantastic series. The attraction can’t be denied.

The six episodes that comprise season two landed on Amazon Prime on May 17, two months after its initial U.K. airing on BBC, and the same weekend that the Game of Thrones finale aired. After a couple days of GOT-ending outrage and disappointment, Fleabag took over the TV discourse. The most massive show on television, one with dragons and battles that take days to shoot and has millions upon millions of viewers, was quickly overshadowed by a series about a woman resisting her feelings for a priest.

When people finished bingeing that second season, it was as if they wanted to shout their love for it from rooftops. The day after one of my best friends made her way through it, she texted me, “I finished Fleabag. Nothing will ever be that good again.” It didn’t even sound like hyperbole.

So what makes Fleabag season two elicit such responses at a time when it’s harder than ever for a single work of television to capture public attention? If I had to single out one thing, aside from Andrew Scott, a.k.a. the Hot Priest, it’s how unbelievably tight the show is. There are just six episodes of Fleabag. Each one lasts 27 minutes or less. From the very beginning, it drops us into a moving car and never lets up on the gas. In an extremely efficient kickoff, it recaps the major moments of the first season, advises in a single title card that season two begins exactly 371 days, 19 hours, and 26 minutes after that previous season ended, and shows us Fleabag in a bathroom, wiping a bloody nose for reasons we don’t yet understand. “This,” Fleabag explains, breaking the fourth wall in her signature fashion, “is a love story.” We don’t yet know why her face is bloody, or why there’s another bleeding woman in the bathroom with her, or who is standing right outside the door asking, “Can I do anything?” Smiles. Charm. Off we go.

Mainstream comedy tends to move at a much quicker clip than it did even a decade ago, the result, perhaps, of shorter attention spans, and the influence of lickety-split television like Arrested Development and 30 Rock. But some sitcoms move quickly simply to prove they can exceed the speed limit. Fleabag, on the other hand, has its own rhythms and invites us to keep up. Season two is really a dance, between Fleabag and her sister Claire, Fleabag and the audience, Fleabag and the Priest.

Oh, lordy, the Priest. The fascination with his character can seemingly be explained in the simplest of terms — he’s hot — but that doesn’t quite capture it. It’s the way that Scott and Waller-Bridge, who have enough chemistry to ignite several biology labs’ worth of Bunsen burners, relate to each other that makes him sexy. As he and Fleabag become more intimate, we, as viewers, palpably feel like we are part of this relationship as well. That’s a testament to the performances of the two actors, but it also speaks to the way that Waller-Bridge has orchestrated our relationship to Fleabag.

By turning us into her confidantes, she draws us into her reality, and therefore her new relationship, too. As the only person who notices that Fleabag regularly winks and comments to some unseen presence, the Priest also becomes aware of us. And because both Fleabag and the Priest are aware of us, we feel seen, in a way that few television shows ever see us. What might have been a clever little narrative device on another show suddenly has much deeper resonance because Waller-Bridge uses it with such smart and specific intent. She has made her two leads fall in love with each other, but she’s also made us fall in love with them and a whole season of television she’s created.

Life teaches us not to expect perfection. No relationship is perfect. No job is perfect. No movie or TV show is perfect. But then along comes something like Fleabag that says, actually, every once in a while, you get to have this. You get to have perfect.

by Jen Chaney, Vulture |  Read more:

Image: Luke Varley/BBC/Two Brothers/Luke Varley

[ed. If you haven't seen Fleabag yet (what's the matter with you?) do click on the 'read more' link for more about this groundbreaking series (with videos). See also: How the Pure, Staggering Power of Fleabag’s Smallest Moments Make It the Best Show on TV (Paste) and Fleabag’s Sian Clifford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge ‘Fantasized’ About Playing Sisters for Years (Vulture). I just watched a few episodes of something that appears to be the precursor to Fleabag (on Netflix or maybe it was Prime), unfortunately I can't remember the name of the show (I'll update here once I figure it out.) Update: It's called Crashing on Netflix (and very good).]