Olivia Colman has played queens, detectives and deeply sympathetic women—but Fleabag gives her the opportunity to become something wonderfully different.

And considerably more dangerous.

In Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s acclaimed dark comedy, Colman plays the unnamed Godmother, an eccentric London artist whose sophisticated smile and seemingly carefree personality conceal a ruthless ability to provoke, manipulate and wound the people around her.

At the center of the story is Fleabag, played by Waller-Bridge herself.

She runs a struggling guinea-pig-themed café in London while attempting to survive a life that appears to be collapsing around her.

On the surface, Fleabag is fearless.

She jokes about sex.

She mocks uncomfortable situations.

She speaks directly to the audience as though nothing can truly hurt her.

But the comedy is camouflage.

Beneath every joke lies devastating grief connected to the death of her closest friend, Boo—a tragedy Fleabag desperately avoids confronting.

Then there is her family.

Her relationship with her emotionally reserved father is strained. Her sister Claire appears to have built a successful, controlled existence but carries problems of her own.

And standing in the middle of that fractured family is Colman’s Godmother.

She was once close to Fleabag’s late mother.

Now she has entered a relationship with Fleabag’s father.

That alone creates tension.

But Godmother possesses an extraordinary talent for turning passive aggression into an art form.

She can deliver an insult while smiling.

She can humiliate Fleabag while pretending to offer kindness.

She can dominate a room without ever admitting that a battle is taking place.

Colman plays those contradictions brilliantly.

A glance lasts slightly too long.

A compliment contains an invisible blade.

A supposedly affectionate gesture becomes another reminder that Fleabag increasingly feels like an outsider within her own family.

The result is hilarious—and deeply uncomfortable.

Yet Fleabag gradually reveals that its sharp humor is protecting something much darker.

Fleabag isn’t simply rebellious or reckless.

She is grieving.

The café itself carries memories of Boo, and as fragments of the past emerge, viewers begin to understand why Fleabag repeatedly sabotages relationships and uses humor to escape emotional intimacy.

Her greatest secret eventually changes the meaning of much of what came before.

Boo’s death was not merely an unrelated tragedy that happened to Fleabag.

Fleabag’s own actions played a devastating role in the chain of events surrounding it.

Suddenly, the jokes feel different.

The promiscuity feels different.

Even those moments when Fleabag looks directly at the audience begin to resemble an emotional escape hatch—a way of avoiding a reality she cannot bear to face alone.

That combination of comedy and heartbreak is what makes Fleabag extraordinary.

And Olivia Colman is essential to it.

Her Godmother represents another kind of emotional warfare: elegant, smiling and almost impossible to confront directly.

By the time family tensions explode, Fleabag has transformed from an apparently outrageous comedy into something far more painful.

Because behind the café, the sex, the sarcasm and those unforgettable smiles lies a story about grief, guilt and people desperately trying to love one another without knowing how.

And sometimes the funniest person in the room is simply the one hiding the deepest wound.