Television series

Fleabag

Name: Fleabag
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: 2016
Cast: Phoebe Waller-Bridge

A brittle, grieving Londoner runs a failing café and burns through friendships, family and men while narrating her own worst behaviour straight to camera. It's a confession booth disguised as a sitcom — filthy, hilarious, then suddenly devastating. Best for anyone who wants comedy with a trapdoor underneath it.

TVMaze rating

8.1

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This Way Up2019

Aisling Bea plays a woman freshly out of a breakdown, joking her way through grief with the same manic charm and terrible decision-making. Warmer than Fleabag but cut from the same cloth.

But Gentler and less formally daring — no fourth-wall tricks, just very good writing about being a mess.

I May Destroy You2020

Michaela Coel turns trauma into something funny, furious and completely unpredictable, narrating her own unraveling with unflinching honesty. Bolder and darker than Fleabag, but built from the same confessional nerve.

But Heavier subject matter than Fleabag ever goes — this one earns its laughs the hard way.

Catastrophe2015

Sharon Horgan doing what she does best: brutal honesty about relationships, dressed up as a sitcom. Fast, filthy, and unafraid to let its characters be genuinely awful to each other.

But Less formally inventive, more traditional two-hander sitcom structure — no direct address, no grand reveal.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Alfie1966no page yet

Fleabag's direct-to-camera confessions have a direct ancestor here: a charismatic Londoner narrating their own bad behaviour straight to the audience, until the joke curdles into guilt.

Michael Caine's charming cad turns to the camera and lets you in on every seduction and self-justification, decades before Fleabag made that trick her own. Same wink, same eventual reckoning.

But Dated gender politics that the film doesn't fully interrogate — it's the source code, warts and all.

Chewing Gum2015

Michaela Coel's first show is cruder and cheaper-looking but has the same reckless comic energy — a young woman narrating her own chaotic sexual awakening with total lack of shame.

But Broader, sillier, and rougher around the edges — this is early work, not polished prestige comedy.

Motherland2016

Sharper and more ensemble-driven, but the same appetite for skewering polite social performance and the lies women tell to survive each other. Consistently, quietly vicious.

But No emotional gut-punch waiting underneath — this stays comedy all the way down.

Broad City2014

Different city, different mess, same commitment to a woman being gloriously, unapologetically ridiculous. Less grief, more joy, but the same refusal to make its heroine likeable on anyone else's terms.

But Much sillier and more absurdist — don't expect the emotional depth charge Fleabag delivers.

Enlightened2011

Laura Dern plays a woman who has completely lost the plot and is trying to reassemble a self out of the wreckage, narrating her own delusions with painful sincerity.

But Slower, sadder, and far less jokey — this is drama that occasionally lets itself laugh, not the reverse.

Grace and Frankie2015

A gentler cousin — two women rebuilding identity after their lives collapse, with real teeth under the sitcom gloss. Proof that messy women get funnier, not tamer, with age.

But Much cosier and more conventional — no fourth wall, no darkness lurking under the punchlines.

Please Like Me2013

An Australian dramedy that swings from broad comedy to real grief in the space of a scene, with the same tonal whiplash and a similarly self-sabotaging lead.

But Lower budget and lower profile — it has the tonal DNA but not the polish or the buzz.

BoJack Horseman2014

Same engine as Fleabag: a magnetic, funny, self-destructive lead using jokes as a smokescreen for grief, in a wildly different-looking package.

An animated sitcom about a washed-up horse-actor that becomes one of the most honest portraits of self-loathing on television, using cartoon absurdity to sneak past your defences.

But Animation and talking animals as a delivery system for despair is a hard sell if you want realism.

Stories We Tell2012

Where Fleabag fictionalises confession for laughs, this documentary does the real thing: a woman implicating herself directly to camera while unpicking her own family's buried truths.

Sarah Polley turns a documentary about her own family's secrets into a meditation on memory, guilt and who gets to tell the story — filmed with the same intimate, implicating camera.

But No jokes, no fiction to hide behind — it's a real family's grief, laid out plainly.