I had heard a lot of praise for it, but just started watching it a few days ago. Wow, I’m blown away.
It’s a black comedy series about a woman with troubled relationships of all kinds–parents, sibling, friends, lovers. It’s hard to describe without getting too much into the plot, but its appeal isn’t primarily in its plot–remember, what matters is not what it’s about, but how it’s about it.
Creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge is just electric. She does a lot of fourth-wall breaking, and every time she looks at the camera, I just die of laughter. Her eyes and face just communicate so well.
Apparently, she didn’t even want to do a second season, but she went ahead and announced that two seasons is definitely the end. Still, amazing show.
I downloaded the first full series to watch with my missus whilst on holiday. I also downloaded “Derry Girls” and “Back To Life” We’d heard good things about them all.
We devoured the latter two and would highly recommend them. Fleabag? We gave it one episode and couldn’t face another. A very posh, very annoying person about whom we couldn’t care less. Zero laughs and the fact that the first sub-playground arsehole joke was spotted a mile away by my wife didn’t get it off a good start.
I love Fleabag to death. Novelty Bubble, it never stops being crude–but the crudeness unfolds into a remarkably deep character portrait, and the longer the show goes, the more devastating the emotional revelations. I needed the toilet humor just to keep from sobbing.
If you can’t take the arsehole jokes, definitely stop watching–but if it’s the posh annoyingness of her, I’d recommend toughing through.
Derry Girls is brilliant. I hadn’t heard of the other one.
Her story is less worthy because she has a nice accent?
I quickly forgot that joke because the relationships in the show are brilliantly biting.
As for being unpleasant, I don’t necessarily require characters to be pleasant for a show to be good, either in a comedy or a drama. Given that most people have significant personality defects, I’m willing to go along with it.
In my summer sampler of streaming services, surprisingly enough I’ve been most impressed with Amazon Prime. Of the many shows I’ve binged over the last three months, my three favorites are amazon originals: Catastrophe, Forever, and Fleabag, in that order. Also, Good Omens was great.
This… I also cannot get anyone to watch it, or if they do, they can’t get past the first episode. It’s one of my favorite shows of all time. I’ve only started watching it a few months ago and have already re-watched 3 times (as recently as last weekend). It’s funny and completely original. Season 2 was especially brilliant.
Reminds me of the negative book review author John Green (who grew up in Alabama) gave to “A Catcher in the Rye” while in high school, as recounted on a recent episode of the “99% Invisible” podcast -
“This book is about Yankees, with Yankee problems”
I watched the pilot with out having any idea what it was. The pilot didn’t grab me, so I stopped watching. I’ll give it another go after reading this thread.
It wasn’t the arsehole joke per-se, it was more a realisation that if such an obvious joke was seen as a worthy statement of intent then we were in for a long half-hour. It thought it was more clever and inventive than it was.
You only get one change to make a first impression and for us it blew it.
I wouldn’t call it a nice accent and it was merely a description of her. Just like “a bunch of teenage, working class, NI girls” describes the protagonists of “Derry Girls”
Absolutely, unpleasant is fine. Annoying and uninteresting is not. I loved “Norsemen” and “The Thick of it” and there’s barely a decent single person in either.
Fair. Nearly everyone I know who’s watched Bojack Horseman declares it pure genius, but I turned it off during the extended cotton-candy-vomiting scene in the pilot and don’t intend to turn it back on. First impression blown.
I thought the show was funny, but I can see that it might not be to everyone’s sense of humour. And I’m generally indifferent to “gut-wrenching” episodes of a comedy series (I’m looking at you, Bojack). But the criticism for being too posh (which is definitely a thing) seems a bit odd to me. So it would be a brilliant show if she were a failing cafe owner with a Geordie accent instead?
But you weren’t writing a neutral description of the show, right? That would be odd in the context of this thread. You were explaining why you reacted negatively to it.
Her poshness was incidental, I’ve disliked plenty of comedy with annoying working class people in it as well.
Another favourite of mine that I recently discovered was “people just do nothing”. The protagonists of which I’d describe as a bunch of London council estate friends getting into various adventures and/or doing nothing.
I love “Four Weddings and a Funeral” which I would describe as posh people with problems that I do care about.