Ten years ago, television changed forever. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s award-winning one-woman Edinburgh Fringe show, Fleabag, might have tip-toed onto BBC Three for its first run in 2016, but soon it became a word-of-mouth phenomenon. There wasn’t a woman in the land who wasn’t told – with almost foaming-mouthed fervour – to watch it. On its 10th anniversary, the two series comedy is regarded as one of the best British TV shows in history.
The messy, unlikeable woman had never been quite so, well, likeable until Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote and played her as a sex-mad, quip-making millennial who was secretly using those exact traits to distract herself from a life-changing trauma. She did the things we couldn’t: she was mean about her dates, she fancied the priest, she masturbated to Obama next to her sleeping boyfriend, she stole from her evil stepmother and told us all about it in secretive to-camera one liners. She was a reflection of our deepest darkest fears and desires, packaged in one gangly, beautiful, chaotic woman.
Consequently, the real woman behind Fleabag was held up as a prophet of women’s inner lives. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, it seemed, really knew us and – most importantly – wasn’t afraid to put it on screen. While her earlier series, Crashing, was also brilliant, it didn’t quite touch the zeitgeist. Fleabag, meanwhile, was at the forefront of fourth-wave feminism, when we were convinced that Hillary Clinton could be President of the US and girl bosses made millions. The timing was perfect – but so was the show.
And so, when Fleabag ended after two series (and rightly so), legions of us waited to find out what this new writing doyenne had in store for us next. We’re still waiting.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge was held up as a prophet of women’s inner lives (Photo: BBC/Two Brothers/Luke Varley)Since leaving her masterpiece in 2019, Waller-Bridge only has one writing credit to her name, as co-writer of the last of Daniel Craig’s James Bond films No Time to Die. It’s a great movie, but hardly what Fleabag fans wanted from their new patron saint. There’s also Killing Eve, of course, written between the two series of Fleabag, whose villain Villanelle was much closer to Fleabag’s brutal honesty – but Waller-Bridge handed the reins over to Emerald Fennell after just one series. The fact that it went downhill (to the point of unwatchable by the 2022 finale) is proof of Waller-Bridge’s talent. And yet, since 2019, she has repeatedly refused to put it to good use.
Not that she has been sitting around doing nothing. She’s an actor, with some big credits to her name: she was Harrison Ford’s goddaughter in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the voice of a robot in Star Wars spin-off movie Solo, and the voice of an osprey daemon in the BBC adaptation of His Dark Materials. Are you sensing the theme?
It would seem that once one becomes a celebrated television figure, the big franchises come knocking – and Waller-Bridge has been more than happy to open the door. I don’t blame her; we don’t know how much she was paid for these gigs, but I’m sure the Star Wars, James Bond, and Indiana Jones bosses have very deep pockets.
In 2019, following Fleabag‘s big night at the Emmys with four wins, Amazon handed her a three-year contract to create exclusive shows for Prime Video, reportedly worth £16 million a year. Despite the agreement being renewed twice, in 2022 and in 2024, the only thing she’s actually made for them is a documentary about an octopus, after leaving the remake of Mr and Mrs Smith due to creative differences.
Waller-Bridge starred in the last Indiana Jones film in 2023 (Photo: Jonathan Olley/Lucasfilm Ltd)Should we be surprised? Disappointed? Perhaps all the adulation we decorated Waller-Bridge with was all in our heads. Perhaps the pressure to follow up on her greatest work with one that lived up to it was all too much. Maybe Fleabag was just a one hit wonder. And maybe – whisper it – Waller-Bridge isn’t even interested in creating original, funny, bracing, sharp shows anymore. What a shame.
Happily, there is a chance for Waller-Bridge to prove me wrong on the horizon, though it is another big franchise. She’s in charge of the new Tomb Raider TV series for Prime Video, with Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner playing the gun-toting archaeologist Lara Croft. Waller-Bridge has proved she can write brilliant women, and that she can create explosive action – here’s hoping this series will be the merging of her talents we’ve been waiting for.
But those of us waiting for another witty, insightful, messy woman to grace our screens again and turn our own lives into a funhouse mirror, it’s time to accept the truth: there will never be another Fleabag.
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