TV News

Phoebe Waller-Bridge's "Fleabag" Live Show Is Now Available Online

Before "Fleabag" was an award-winning TV show, it was a play.

Fleabag was one of the best TV shows of the past few years.

Searingly funny and unsparing in its evisceration of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character, known only as Fleabag, it even made an impression on Barack Obama. (It also sparked a new wave of fascination with priests, but that's another story).

Now, you can see where it all began. Phoebe Waller-Bridge's excellent TV show started out as a one-woman show and was first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. From there, it moved to the Soho Theatre in 2013, and it was eventually commissioned for the screen.

Fleabag The Play is available to stream (if you're in the UK or Ireland) on Soho Theatre's streaming website, and it will become available on the website for Australia, New Zealand, and Canada starting April 10th. For US-based folks, it'll be available for two weeks on Amazon Prime starting the same date. Viewers can download the broadcast for 48 hours.

One of those London performances was recorded, and you can now purchase it for only £4—and even better, all the proceeds will go towards coronavirus relief funds.

"I hope this filmed performance of Fleabag can help raise money while providing a little theatrical entertainment in these isolated times," said Waller-Bridge, whose fund has already collected over $300,000 (including a large donation from Waller-Bridge herself). "Thank you to all our partners and to the creative team who have waived their royalties from this production to raise money for such vital causes in this unbelievably challenging situation.

"All money raised will support the people throughout our society who are fighting for us on the frontlines and those financially devastated by the crisis, including those in the theatre community. Thank you in advance to those who donate. Now go get into bed with Fleabag! It's for charity!"

This isn't the only opportunity for you to binge something of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's during the pandemic. The new season of Killing Eve, which Waller-Bridge executive-produced, will be available on the BBC iPlayer on April 13th.

Film Features

"Portrait of a Lady on Fire" and the Creation of the Female Gaze

Sciamma seems to ask her audience why they've defined sensuality so rigidly when the possibilities are so vast.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire [Official Trailer] – In Theaters December 6, 2019

Céline Sciamma's period drama, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, starring Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant, is an answer to the question, "Can an erotic film about two women be made without an omnipresent male gaze?"

The answer is, definitively, yes.

As John Berger says in "Ways of Seeing"—his landmark essay that discusses the images of women in fine art—"the male gaze" refers to the way that women primarily exist in art as an object to be viewed by men. He says, "Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object–and most particularly an object of vision: a sight." But in this film Sciamma brings forth the notion that perhaps the male gaze can be escaped, not just in art but in life, and that maybe shaping a world seen through a female gaze is the way to save it.

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"Queer as Folk" changed the media landscape for LGBTQ+ representation.

Peacock's reimagined 'Queer As Folk' premier, Outfest's 2nd Annual The OutFronts, Los Angeles, June 2022

Photo by Matt Baron (Shutterstock)

In the early 2000s, Queer as Folk captivated audiences with its honest portrayal of the lives of LGBTQ+ men and women living in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

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Film Lists

Your Friends Aren't Funny: Best and Worst Comedy Specials on Netflix

With Netflix green-lighting any project with shapes and colors, comedy specials range from amusing to mediocre to feeling as joyless as a DVD enthusiast.

Hannah Gadsby - Comedian

Photo by Marion Curtis (Shutterstock)

Netflix wants you to realize that you and your friends aren't funny.

With 47 new stand-up comedy specials released on New Year's Day alone, Netflix is banking on your life being so devoid of humor that you'll watch anything. As the company continues to outspend competitors like HBO and CBS, the streaming service is expected to spend $15 billion this year (up from $13 billion in 2018). While they at least do us the favor of keeping Richard Pryor: Live in Concert available to stream, they also green light any project that features shapes and colors.

Netflix's massive collection of comedy specials ranges from amusing to mediocre to feeling as joyless as a DVD enthusiast. Here are five recent specials worth your time–and five that can only be described as crimes against comedy.

1. John Mulaney - New in Town (2012) / Kid Gorgeous at Radio City (2018)

John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid | Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

Of Mulaney's three specials, New in Town is required watching, partly due to his unassuming irreverence and partly due to the special's themes about alienation and social anxiety befitting a debut feature. But Kid Gorgeous at Radio City shows the former SNL-writer as a mature comic who's more stylized and practiced in his offbeat, "aw shucks" delivery.

2. Ali Wong - Baby Cobra (2016) / Hard Knock Wife (2018)

Ali Wong: Hard Knock Wife | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

Performing while seven months pregnant might be Wong's lucky charm. The Fresh Off the Boat-writer followed up her 2016 special, which inspired Halloween costumes riffing on her large glasses and short dress with a heavily pregnant belly, with a second feature and a second pregnancy. Hard Knock Wife delivers more of Wong's unapologetic humor, from mocking racial and gender stereotypes to comparing a new mother's v*gina to "two hanging dicks."

3. Hannah Gadsby - Nanette (2018)

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

Gadsby's much-lauded comedy special taps into our recent interest in more empathetic stand-up. The Australian comedian unpacks queerness and gender biases by exploring her own trauma and identity conflicts–mixed with bawdy and incisive observational humor.

4. Iliza Schlesinger - Confirmed Kills (2016) / Elder Millennial (2018)

Iliza: Elder Millennial | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

Schlesinger's style is so consistent and performative that you forget she got her start winning the lackluster stand-up competition Last Comic Standing in 2008. She's passionate about political issues, but she's also a millennial; her social commentary combines the two in manic bits promoting feminist messages while mocking "girl culture." As a result, some of her stream-of-conscious rants are brilliant, while others make you wonder, "Is that what 'problematic' means?" Both are worth it.

5. Hari Kondabolu - Warn Your Relatives (2018)

Hari Kondabolu: Warn Your Relatives | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

Kondabolu is a nerd's comic. With a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics, he is strikingly political, deadpan, and acerbic. If that's not to your taste, that's fine. As he self-deprecates in his set, his Indian mother doesn't get him either.

Crimes against comedy include:

1. Ken Jeong - You Complete Me, Ho (2019)

Ken Jeong: You Complete Me, Ho | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

He's the brilliant comedic mind that earned riotous acclaim in The Hangover in 2009 – as in, his unevolved humor is the exact same. From Asian stereotypes to dad-puns, Jeong switches from dirty jokes to praising his wife's survival of breast cancer with little to no segues.

2. Kevin James - Don't Never Give Up (2018)

Kevin James: Never Don’t Give Up | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

From 1998-2007, Kevin James was a popular choice for a generic sitcom oaf. Sadly, we've grown up since then. As shown by CBS's shortlived show Kevin Can Wait, which Vulture described as "exactly as awful as you imagined," James hasn't. Plus, he apparently really hates people with peanut allergies.

3. Nick Kroll and John Mulaney - Oh, Hello on Broadway (2017)

Oh, Hello Broadway | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

To be clear, we wanted to like this so badly. Between John Mulaney's awkward observational humor and Nick Kroll's sharp self-deprecation creating Big Mouth, there was promise in the two joining forces. If you were won over by the Kroll Show's popular Internet fodder, "Too Much Tuna," you'll probably think this special is fine.

4. Adam Sandler - 100% Fresh (2018)

ADAM SANDLER: 100% FRESH | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

Between 1995 and 2007, many of us grew up under the auspices of Adam Sandler's fart jokes and falsetto nonsense. It's like he's who Kevin James wanted to be. But as we came of age, we had to confront difficult realities: the Tooth Fairy isn't real, WWE wrestling is staged, and Adam Sandler isn't funny.

5. Gabriel Iglesias - One Show Fits All (2019)

Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias: One Show Fits All | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflixwww.youtube.com

Streaming anything by "Fluffy" is a waste of your bandwidth. But we have to admire him for being one of the richest yet universally unfunny comedians of our time.

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Remember the "Resident Evil" Films? We're So Sorry

Now that Netflix is turning it into TV series, here are some of the most memorable insults to the Resident Evil film franchise.

Ruby Rose, Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, and Rola at the "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" Los Angeles Premiere 2017 in Hollywood, CA

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The makers of the Resident Evil film franchise will turn their perfectly generic dystopia into a television series.

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Netflix's "Ted Bundy Tapes" Leaves Viewers Scared and Confused

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Zac Efron - Set to inhabit Bundy in the upcoming film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

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The most surprising takeaway from Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes is how many women still find America's favorite murderer attractive.

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