Memory makes the heart grow fonder, or so they say. Or, at the very least, time makes you forgive some of the little things. Which may explain why, when I find myself looking back on TV shows or movies that I love, I find myself growing more fond of them in time, and forgiving them for minor things that I may have had issues with before. This is certainly evident as I was compiling my Top 25 Movies of the Century So Far list, as I was linking my reviews to my favorite movies, I found that my original reviews of these movies, all of which I have grown to absolutely love, were not all raves, much to my surprise.
So maybe it’s just easier to be more critical the first time around, or familiarity fosters a better 
sense of fairness, who knows. But it does seem that my first impressions of TV shows and movies aren’t always the lasting ones, which prompted me to go back and see if I perhaps had overestimated a show that bowled me over so much at the time, I thought it was one of the best things I had ever watched.
Well, it looks like I’m not the only one, as this brief meteor of a show, which only had two short but brilliant seasons, is still sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes nine years later, which means not a single critic has published a negative review. In over 42 reviews of the first season and 99 reviews of the second, not a single naysayer. I’m clearly not the only one who agrees Fleabag is perfect. Thank goodness.
I know most of you have already seen Fleabag, but, if there’s anyone reading this that hasn’t yet, this is for you. Please do yourself a favor and find it and revel in creator/writer/star Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s dry-wit black comedy masterpiece about a woman trying to cope with life after a tragedy. Waller-Bridge is now known to us more as a screenwriter (No Time to Die) and a producer (Killing Eve), but Fleabag is what put her on the map in Hollywood as a triple threat who could deliver a knockout show that everyone—and I mean everyone—was talking about.
When the first season of Fleabag came out, in 2016, it was a revelation. Waller-Bridge’s style of raunchy, self-deprecating, clever, break-the-fourth-wall dry, dark wit was a rapid-fire delight, and when it was combined with the ensemble of elite British actors that she surrounded herself with, including the masterful Olivia Colman, who reminds us she is just as funny as she is dramatic, it was nothing short of electric.
I’m absolutely sure that part of what made the first season of Fleabag so delicious was the fact that it was only six episodes (as they do in Britain). It was short and oh-so-sweet. Waller-Bridge based the show on her one-woman show that she had performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013. Because of that, Waller-Bridge felt she was one-and-done after the first season, because she had done her whole show. But when Fleabag was such a hit for Amazon Prime, there was immense pressure on her to create a second season, which she did reluctantly.
The second season of Fleabag came out three years after the first, in 2019, and Waller-Bridge assumed everyone would have forgotten all about it—and her—and that the second season would be a huge disaster.
But the second season was even bigger than the first. All thanks to one particular character.
Andrew Scott was added to the cast in the second season, in the role of a priest who befriends Waller-Bridge’s character (who doesn’t have a name, by the way) and creates one of the most memorable characters in modern television history. If you thought everyone was talking about the first season, you were living under a rock if you weren’t hearing people talking about “hot priest.” It was a sensation.
And all so deserved.
Fleabag is truly a masterpiece of writing, acting and all-around execution of a small, perfectly enclosed gem of a show, 12 perfect episodes of dark comedy mastery. The word smart comes to mind more than anything else, but it’s also incredibly silly at the same time. It’s a combination not done this well since Monty Python, and yet there’s nothing Python-esque about Fleabag. It truly stands on its own in its self-awareness, its own sense of pathos and profundity, its charisma and character, but mostly it’s made by Waller-Bridge’s unique voice, which is used to paint every character. Fleabag is a show driven by character and writing, and the show begins and ends with the words and the brilliance of the actors who are saying them and the chemistry they have together.
Fleabag’s second season won Emmys for directing, writing, Best Lead Actress in a Comedy for Waller-Bridge and for Best Comedy Series. And then it was done. Two perfect seasons and Waller-Bridge said it was over. She never even wanted to do a second season and yet she delivered one that was even better than the first. So I guess we’ll just be happy we got what we got and we can enjoy it as long as Prime keeps it on the platform.
So, if you haven’t yet basked in the certified perfection that is Fleabag, do yourself a favor and watch it now. And if you have seen it, go back and watch it again. Meteors like this are rare.
Two seasons (12 episodes) of Fleabag are available to stream on Prime Video.