Fleabag hops from BBC Three to BBC Two

If you're in the know, then you will have already been watching Fleabag, waiting patiently for the last five Thursdays as BBC Three released each episode online. If you're not in the know, we'd like to put you in the know, so, y'know...know, and give you the opportunity to start watching the series from the beginning as it airs on BBC Two on Sunday 21 August at 10pm.

The creation of Phoebe Waller-Bridge (who also co-wrote the excellent Crashing shown earlier this year on Channel 4), Fleabag started life as a one-woman play which debuted at The Edinburgh Festival in 2013. Waller-Bridge wrote and stars in the dark comedy, her response to Damian Kavanagh, Digital Controller of BBC Three commissioning the six-part series being "I can't believe they've let me do this.”

Fleabag has been described as a lot of things from 'a really, really, really, really bleak version of Miranda' (Guardian), to 'a gloriously rude update of Bridget Jones's Diary' (Telegraph), to 'The British answer to ‘Girls’' (Grazia) and has seemed to have caught the imagination of viewers too, with a large amount of them taking to Twitter to praise the show, from popstars:

to journalists:

to fellow comedy writers:

So, as mentioned, the series starts its run on terrestrial TV on Sunday 21 August, but Fleabag is not the first comedy that has found its footing in the nurturing environment of BBC Three and then made the leap to BBC One or BBC Two. We had a quick scan through the archives and found these BBC Three original comedies that were repeated on or moved to the mainstream BBC channels and went on to great success.

Starting out on Radio 4, Little Britain had it's first airing on television as part of the new channel showcase on BBC Three on February 9th, 2003, listed as 'Comedy sketches satirising modern life', the show was repeated on BBC One from December of the same year and spawned a host of quotable catcphrases from schoolgirl Vicky Pollard's 'Yeah but no but' to the jobsworthian 'Computer says no'.

Written by and starring Julia Davis, this (very) dark sitcom centred around Jill, a 27 year old beauty salon owner, determined to make a fresh start after learning her husband Terry (Kevin Eldon) has terminal cancer. Airing on BBC Three in January 2004, it made it's way to BBC Two two months later. The show which also starred Angus Deayton and Rebecca Front (The Day Today,The Thick Of It) won critical acclaim, winning BAFTA awards for Best Comedy Performance and Situation Comedy, and Best New TV Comedy at the British Comedy Awards in 2005.

Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding's offbeat sitcom set in a magical zoo was a follow on to The Boosh radio series which was first broadcast on BBC London Live in 2001. The Mighty Boosh first appeared on TV in May 2004. The duo's surreal 'journey through time and space' became a cult classic and series one was repeated on BBC Two in November, 2004. The comedy ran for three series and the pair also toured a stage version of the show. Fielding went on to become (among other things) a team captain on BBC Two's Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

After appearing in the aforementioned Little Britain (as Myfanwy) and Nighty Night (as Linda), Ruth Jones went on to co-write Gavin and Stacey with James Corden (The Wrong Mans). The award-winning sitcom following the blossoming relationship between a girl from Barry and a boy from Billericay was first broadcast in July 2007 on BBC Three with a repeat of the following month on BBC Two. The second series was also premiered on the BBC's digital only channel, but the Christmas special in 2008 and the third (and final) series were first aired on BBC One, with the show's last episode on January 1st, 2010 attracting just over 10.2 million viewers.

Alright, so Him & Her, a comedy based around the lives of Becky and Steve, a young couple living together in a flat in Walthamstow, never actually left BBC Three, much in the same way the two main characters never seemed to leave their flat, but we thought it was worth a mention, not only because of it's popularity, but because the writer, Stefan Golaszewski's latest creation Mum was broadcast on BBC Two earlier this year. Starring Leslie Manville as Cathy, a recently widowed mum of a grown up son, this charming sitcom, too, struggled to leave the house.

Kicking off in September 2012, Cuckoo was BBC Three's most watched comedy launch. Starring Greg Davies, Helen Baxendale and originally starring Tamla Kari as Rachel and US Comic Andy Samberg (Saturday Night Live, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) as the title character, the comedy about a suburban family dealing with their daughter's, new, New Age husband proved popular and continues to be a jewel in the BBC Three crown. Series three was one of the first programmes to become available when BBC Three became an online only channel in February 2016 with the series being repeated on BBC One.

Jen Macro is Digital Content Producer, About the BBC Blog and website.

• Read how BBC Three continue to commission and nurture new comedy talent: 'BBC Three feeds you brand new British comedy' on the BBC Media Centre website
• Watch all 6 episodes of Fleabag on BBC iPlayer
• Find out about the BBC Landmark Sitcom Season in 'Here comes the comedy Olympics'
• Follow @BBCThree on twitter