Last night saw the return of “tragicomedy” cult hit series Fleabag after a three-year break.

A lot has changed since then. The show’s writer and lead character Phoebe WallerBridge has become television hot property, leaving viewers gripped by the series Killing Eve, which she also wrote. Meanwhile, her co-star, Olivia Colman has become an awardshow staple, blowing a raspberry during her win at the Oscars.

Based on a one-woman play originally aired at the Edinburgh Fringe, Waller-Bridge’s script focuses on the haphazard life of a struggling millennial who careers through relationships, whose life is one eyebrow-raising sexual encounter after another and who is on a permanent collision course with her dysfunctional family.

Leading the pack of powerful, dark comedy dramas mostly with strong female protagonists – in a similar vein is C4’s Derry Girls, Desiree Akhavan’s recent comedy drama Bisexual and Netflix’s Russian Doll – it would appear women are increasingly finding a fresh, gritty and realistic comedy voice.

The Herald:

“Women characters in comedy programmes used to get to roll their eyes as the credits rolled in a ‘what is he like?’ kind of way,” says Dr Andy Dougan, lecturer in Filmmaking, Digital Film and Television at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

“With Fleabag, I think the fact that you have a young woman writing it who is playing a young woman dealing with issues facing young women of her generation is part of its success.

“There’s also a sense of breaking the glass ceiling; that she is here with her trucks parked on the lawn of the boys’ club.

“It’s as if television has discovered young women as a viable demographic and that old adage – that women can’t be funny – has turned out not to be true after all.”

The Herald:

For viewers tuning in to Fleabag series two, there’s a stellar cast including Coleman, a dame in the form of multi-awarding winning Kristin Scott-Thomas and “Petunia Dursley” Harry Potter actress Fiona Shaw, more recently seen as the unconventional head of the Russian section of M16 in Killing Eve.

Previously consigned to BBC3, Auntie Beeb has now hitched up her skirts to place it, and its jaw-dropping references to sexual practices, on primetime BBC1. “Sexual candour is how Fleabag controls her environment and conversations,” explained Waller-Bridge in one recent interview.

“It’s a very empowering way to distract from her inner pain.” Not the kind of topics typically found on Terry and June, and definitely the kind of talk that would have Victor Meldrew in “I don’t believe it” mode.

But it’s not just Fleabag that’s pushing comedy boundaries. Last night also saw the first screening of Jerk, a comedy built around actor Tim Renkow’s cerebral palsy, and a character who uses his disability as a device to bully people into getting what he wants.

And on the way tonight is Home, a C4 comedy about a Syrian refugee who is taken in by a middle-class Surrey family. Not a topic that instantly screams “lol” but one which Hassan Akkad, a former prisoner of the Assad regime who filmed his escape across Europe for a Bafta-winning series, Exodus, and who acted as a special advisor to the writers, says could help change attitudes to refugees.

The Herald:

“Everyone was interested in the drama of journey, but nobody asks what was on our Spotify playlist,” he said. “Doing a comedy will actually humanise the story a bit more, especially for people who distance themselves from the whole thing.”

According to Dr Sarah Artt, lecturer in English and Film at Edinburgh Napier University, there is a clear shift in the comedy drama landscape. “I think there’s something happening with unruly and very frank female protagonists behaving in ways that we’ve not seen before,” she says.

“Women in stand-up comedy have traded on ideas of sexual promiscuity and body image for a long time. But it’s something different to see it come into the realm of television comedy and a scripted TV drama.

“In Fleabag, people like the frankness of the main protagonist and also the idea that there’s this place for women who at one stage might have been perceived as unlikeable.

“She is incredibly frank in terms of the way she judges men sexually and the way men are treated in the show is very much like they are accessories.”

She suggests organisations like the BBC are becoming more willing to take a chance on material they might have rejected in the past as being too risky, as competition from streaming platforms heats up and the need to sell on content to help fund the next big programme, increases.

Meanwhile, Fleabag picks up where it left off – this time there’s a priest, an exploration of Christian themes and Catholicism rattling around alongside further exploration of unravelling relationships and plenty of sex.