With Olivia Colman and Hugh Dennis

Olivia Colman and Hugh Dennis are to star in a sexually explicit feminist comedy-drama for BBC Three.

Fleabag is based on the acclaimed 2013 Edinburgh Fringe monologue of the same name by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also takes the title role in the TV version.

Bill Paterson, Jamie Demetriou and W1A’s Hugh Skinner also star in the six-part series, which starts shooting in London this week following a successful pilot last year.

The character of Fleabag is described as a ‘dry-witted, angry, cash-strapped, grief-riddled, porn-watching young woman trying to come to terms with a recent tragedy… sleeping with anyone who dares to stand too close, squeezing money from wherever she can, rejecting anyone who tries to help her, and keeping up her bravado throughout’.

Waller-Bridge said today: ‘I can’t believe they let me do this.’

It is the second comedy of hers to be made this year, following Channel 4’s Crashing, which focused on the lives and loves of twentysomething property guardians living together in a disused London hospital.

Jenny Rainsford, Sian Clifford and US comedian Brett Gelman round out the cast of Fleabag, which is being directed by No Offence’s Harry Bradbeer and produced by Lydia Hampson for Two Brothers Pictures.

Shane Allen, the BBC’s controller of comedy commissioning, said: ‘This knocked me for six when I saw the one-woman stage play. It is utterly distinctive, and the writing has attracted the wish-list cast for the TV series. 

‘Phoebe is destined for great things and it’s a perfect fit for BBC Three whose mission is to uncover and nurture the writing and performing stars of tomorrow.’

The Fleabag character ‘came from a frustration and a rage about the objectification of women’ Waller-Bridge told the Evening Standard in 2013. ‘It’s tiresome and exhausting to be surrounded by it.

‘It’s so drilled into her brain that she sexualises everything — herself, her friends, her food, her job — and she uses internet porn all the time. 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.’

The play – which was described as ‘unbelievably rude, astoundingly filthy’ – was nominated for an Olivier Award and earned Waller-Bridge the 2014 Critics Circle Award for most promising playwright.

Waller-Bridge previously appeared with Colman in the second series of ITV’s hit crime drama Broadchurch last year.

Crashing, which was inspired by characters in Waller-Bridge’s series of short plays Good. Clean. Fun, attracted 620,000 viewers when it launched on Channel 4, and attracted largely positive reviews, with the Radio Times calling it ‘a funny, smart series about an incredibly modern way of living’ that ‘deserved to be a big hit’.

- by Jay Richardson
 

Published: 20 Apr 2016