The hound of heaven

When the late night television talk shows were forced into home studios and zoom calls by the pandemic, it felt a bit forced and weird at first. 

The traditional opening monologues felt bare and raw with no audience laughing, cheering, and clapping. The zoom interviews also felt a bit naked, but they also, over time, seemed more intimate. 

Maybe I shouldn't use "naked" and "intimate" in the same sentence. I mean that the exchanges had the opportunity to feel a bit more genuine: less like an interview, and more like a conversation. 

Or more like an interview, and less like a performance. 

I was talking about Fleabag yesterday, and this morning, I remembered this encounter from over a year ago with Stephen Colbert locked down in his home in South Carolina, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge replying from England, where she was sheltering with her sister. 

At the very end of the relaxed and entertaining session, Colbert ambushed Waller-Bridge with a question about the fox (the animal kind, I should clarify) who seems to stalk the "Hot Priest" in the second season of Fleabag. 

Replying to his own question, Colbert quoted quite hefty bits from a poem by Francis Thompson called "The Hound of Heaven". It's very long, and Colbert didn't quote the whole thing, but watch Phoebe Waller-Bridge's reaction: I think she's reacting in astonishment and wonder. 

Colbert is a practising Catholic, and Waller-Bridge, although not practising, attended an all-girls' Catholic school. And heaven knows, the poem is really Catholic, in its intensity, passion, length... 

And yes, if you watch Fleabag (and you should), it does make a certain degree of sense. It's odd to get this sort of insight from a talk show; I'm not sure it would work with a studio audience.

Watching this clip, and reflecting on the story arcs of both seasons of Fleabag, I remembered the comedian David Steinberg and one of his early routines, when he said, of his interfaith marriage with his Catholic wife: "I teach her all about guilt; she teaches me about shame." 

The chief character of Fleabag (Waller-Bridge), nameless as she is, (as is the Priest), is in a morass of guilt and shame about a tragedy that takes place before the first season and is revealed, shockingly, in the final minutes of the last episode of the first season.  In the final minutes of the second season, she moves beyond the guilt and shame.  I don't think she's being pursued by the hound of heaven; she's remaining an atheist, but I think she has respect for those who are pursued, knowing that the pursuit is a personal one, and does involve a decision.

But you should really watch Fleabag and decide for yourself.