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In a wrenching scene towards the end of the first episode of Fleabag, the eponymous heroine (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) turns up at her dad’s door at two o’clock in the morning. Fleabag is upset. Like a stray cat, she looks like she’s tried every door down the street. Except this is her family home. Or rather - and it’s a big rather - her dad’s house.
“It’s nothing,” she says, when her father (played by Bill Paterson) opens the door, and promptly tells her, “It’s nearly 2 o’clock in the morning” (Waller-Bridge 2016a, 19:44-21:08).
Her dad guards the door, like she’s a salesperson. Fleabag hesitates, then blurts out:
Oh fuck it, I have a horrible feeling that I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist. (Waller-Bridge 2016a, 19:44-21:08)
Beat.
You get all that from your mother. (Waller-Bridge 2016a, 19:44-21:08)
It could have been a funny response, if it wasn’t the middle of the night. If Fleabag wasn’t visibly distressed. If her mother wasn’t dead. In the first episode of the first series, the viewer learns that Fleabag’s mother - and her best friend - have recently passed away.
In a close-up shot we watch Fleabag’s face as it shifts from dejected yet hopeful, to shocked, to broken, before, in typical Fleabag style, she rallies around, laughs in the face of life’s shitshow.
“Good one.” (Waller-Bridge 2016a, 19:44-21:08)
The camera work in this series is as important as the dialogue. Her father’s look over the threshold of his doorstep is a failed look of recognition. Her dad cannot see what the viewer can - Fleabag’s visible pain - the close-up of her distorting, disturbed and disturbing face. And, a moment later, as Fleabag ascends the stairs, she does what the series is perhaps best known for - breaks the fourth wall. Abruptly looking the viewer in the eye,