We just heard that Catastrophe is coming back for two more seasons, which is happy news given it’s presently one of our favorite shows. Perhaps even more exciting for fans of single-girl shows like Girls and Sex and the City, however, is the upcoming Amazon Prime release of the British show Fleabag, whose creator is being touted as the next Lena Dunham. Broadchurch’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge first staged Fleabag as an (award-winning) Edinburgh Fringe monologue, and it’s since been turned into a six-episode BBC show airing now in the UK and coming to Amazon Prime in the fall. Its title character, a 20-something single girl living in London, is an antihero in much the same vein as Girls’ Hannah Horvath. Waller-Bridge based Fleabag on her own experiences in her 20s, telling The Guardian, “When I meet girls who are like, 23, 24, I just want to hug them now. (Back then) I felt very aware of my sexuality and very aware of what that meant in terms of my worth. As long as you were skinny and hot first, then you were allowed to get on with the rest of your life. The injustice of that.”
Whereas Dunham’s Horvath is an outwardly messy, almost uncomfortably authentic character, Fleabag carefully curates her existence to please those around her. It’s only beneath this cultivated exterior, never lacking in red lipstick, that Fleabag lives up to her moniker. “It’s so drilled into her brain that she sexualizes everything—herself, her friends, her food, her job—and she uses Internet porn all the time,” Waller-Bridge said of her character. “She’s got to the point where she believes that sex defines her completely. People may recoil in horror at some of the things she says and think she’s repulsive, but I understand her and I think other women can relate to her. There’s a vulnerability that I hope people can see.”
We’re still waiting on Fleabag’s exact release date stateside, but in the meantime, you can purchase the monologue on which it’s based here.
