Fleabag

Fleabag runs a failing café in London and moves through life with a sharp, dirty joke always ready. She sleeps around, needles her family, and narrates her own bad decisions straight to camera with a raised eyebrow, as if daring you to judge her before she judges herself first.

The fourth-wall glances are the trick that makes her: a flirtatious aside that lets you laugh along right up until the show yanks the joke away and shows you the grief underneath it. Waller-Bridge plays both registers at once, so the comedy never quite stops hurting, and the hurt never quite stops being funny.