Fleabag

It’s one of the best seasons of TV I’ve seen in ages.

If Waller-Bridge failed to deliver a follow-up to her aggressively wonderful first season of “Fleabag,” in which she stars on top of writing, one might wonder what the point was in having two great series suffer. But there’s no such need, given the absolutely masterful execution of the comedy’s sophomore run, an example of brilliance slathered on brilliance.

What could’ve been a cash-in from Waller-Bridge, the writer and producer behind BBC America’s sleeper hit Killing Eve, turns out to be a masterpiece.

As great as season one was, season two is just about perfect. You could even call it watching it a religious experience.

Fleabag Season 2, which I cannot recommend highly enough, is thrillingly deep, funny, and buoyant. ... The ending is hopeful, but, to my mind, a little rushed. What a joy, for my major complaint about a TV show to be that there is not enough of it—the opposite problem of basically every other show on television.

It’s clever, compelling, and endlessly thoughtful. That’s true of the series as a whole. Too often you watch a television show and wonder what could have been excised; here, not a beat is spared. Yet when it reaches its bittersweet, indelible conclusion, the ache isn’t one of wishing “Fleabag” could go on forever. It’s a simple, sweet moment of loss.

The new season feels immediately confident, if inevitably less groundbreaking. Yet it continues to push its form. ... It remains an original.

An almost annoyingly perfect show about the inseparable agony and ecstasy of being alive. ... Everything wonderful about the show remains.

Fleabag season two, the follow-up to Waller-Bridge’s initial, brutally honest portrait of a British woman on the brink, is even better than the first.

“Fleabag” has callbacks to the first season’s revelation and an ending that’s so perfect it really should be in a textbook for comedy writers.

Crackling with intelligence but consumed with regrets and issues with her broken family, this neurotic Fleabag is an audacious marvel. [13-26 May 2019, p.11]

Season 2 is much more open in every way.

Season 2 is a towering accomplishment, proving what many have suspected since her debut: Waller-Bridge is operating on a higher plane, and she’s kind enough to take the audience along with her.

Throughout this magnificent second season, Fleabag buzzes with life. The characters are so well-drawn, and the performers so skillful, that each frame is resonant with their interpersonal friction—and laden with their unspoken shame.

The comedy, which unfolds in six delightfully perfect installments, remains as sharp and as witty as ever.

Among Fleabag’s great joys is its ability to be gut-bustingly funny while exploring its main character’s very real and obvious suffering. That gift is on ample display from the season’s first minute to its last. ... And because we’ve now spent so much time in her company, Fleabag’s failures and her triumphs resonate even more deeply than before, in a way that lets the season surpass the first on many levels.

With the characters and their histories now mostly clear to the audience, the story moves along a somewhat less bold, more conventional path compared to last season, which constantly doubled back by recontextualizing and reexamining itself. Despite this more straightforward approach, though, the series still boasts Waller-Bridge’s unmistakable voice and her witty, resonant characterizations.

Some wrap-up elements are conventional after season 1's primal scream. ... But Clifford and Waller-Bridge are a transcendent sister act. And the spiritual plotline is transgressive, even Bergman-esque. [3/10 May 2019, p.74]

Waller-Bridge hasn't rested on her laurels and, like all the best writers, is offering something familiar yet intriguingly different.