Dramatic Comedy [upd] Online

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag serves as a contemporary masterclass in dramatic comedy. The series hinges on an unreconciled tragedy: the death of the protagonist’s best friend, Boo, which was indirectly caused by Fleabag’s sexual betrayal.

By refusing the binary of laughing at or crying for its characters, dramatic comedy invites us to laugh and cry with them. In doing so, it provides not catharsis (the purging of emotion) nor amusement (the distraction from emotion), but something rarer: . It tells us that to be human is to tell a joke with tears still wet on one’s face—and that this, perhaps, is the most honest story of all. dramatic comedy