Fleabag, the British comedy-drama created, written and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, continues to hold a 100 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes a decade after it first aired, a figure that places it among a very small number of series in the history of the platform. The show is currently available on Amazon Prime Video.
The series follows Fleabag, a candid and irreverent London woman in her thirties navigating a personal crisis after the death of her best friend. She sleeps with anyone who comes near her, tries to avoid asking her sister Claire for money, and resists settling into a stable adult life. One of the show’s defining devices is its protagonist’s habit of breaking the fourth wall, directly challenging viewers who might want to pass moral judgment on her choices.
Waller-Bridge originally developed the character from a dare. According to the source, a friend challenged her to create a ten-minute sketch telling a one-night story, and the idea grew from there. She first performed the material as a solo monologue of the same name at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013, winning first prize.
Cast and Scores
Alongside Waller-Bridge, the main cast includes Sian Clifford as Claire, Olivia Colman as the stepmother, Bill Paterson as the father, and Brett Gelman as Martin, Claire’s husband. Ben Aldridge and Jamie Demetriou appear as recurring characters in the first season, while Andrew Scott, Fiona Shaw, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Ray Fearon join in the second.
Beyond its perfect critics’ score, the show holds a 92 percent audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 92 percent expert score on Metacritic with an average public rating of 8.3 out of 10, a 7.8 out of 10 on FilmAffinity, and an 8.7 out of 10 on IMDb.
The series runs to two seasons of six episodes each. With each episode lasting between 25 and 30 minutes, all 12 chapters can be watched in a couple of afternoons.
