The third episode of the second season of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's acclaimed tragicomedy Fleabag ends with her visiting the new character known simply as 'The Priest' (played by Andrew Scott). He is the man set to marry her father and step-mother, and someone she has found herself seeking out more and more.

They sit in his garden drinking tins of gin and tonic, carefully dancing around the subject of what they mean to each other, amusingly interspersed with The Priest's paranoia there's a fox in the garden. ("Foxes have been after me for years," he explains.)

When they can avoid it no more, the clergyman explains carefully that they aren't going to have sex: "I know that's what you think you want from me, but it's not."

This is the moment when Fleabag does something which has become a hallmark of the show: she looks at us directly down the camera, and quips that their just being friends won't last a week.

Then something entirely new happens. The Priest notices - or notices something - happen. "What was that?" he asks, confused. "Where did you just go?" Fleabag then shoots a very freaked-out face in our direction.

BBC

Fleabag's first season was defined by these fourth wall-breaking asides. It was a continuation of the intimate relationship Waller-Bridge established with her audience back when it was a one-woman play, something she has said she did because "[the character] was constantly on the verge of needing to confess".

Going into series two, there was always risk the device would lose its impact, particularly after the sucker-punch big reveal that Fleabag is implicated in her friend's suicide. In other TV dramas, it can often feel like a cheap trick - think how often Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood relied on muttering angrily to the camera to fill in a plot gap.

BBC

It's yet another testament to the quality of Waller-Bridge's writing that she has found a way not only to tinker with the trick cleverly, but use it to tell us even more about the vulnerability of her main character - and the strength of the new connection she's made.

Whether it was romantic interests, ex partners or her father, Fleabag so far has been filled with insipid and uninspiring men. In The Priest, this moment suggests, she's finally found an equal - someone who hears her in a way nobody else can.

BBC

Whether this results in romance or friendship is, refreshingly for a TV show, beside the point. "I believe God meant for me to love people in a different way", The Priest says. The suggestion is that somebody is finally listening to her.

Somehow, Waller-Bridge has taken the tired trope of a religious figure offering salvation and made it feel like untrodden ground. Scott is wonderful to watch as her sparring partner ("I like that you believe in a meaningless existence" he says softly), but his tenderness for Fleabag is also clear to see. The final scene is a moment between two people so electric and real, so perfectly underplayed, it has you praying this man will renounce his faith for her. A strange and complex emotion to feel, sure - but then that's exactly where Waller-Bridge likes us to be.

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