I Watched Baby Reindeer Just Like Everyone Said I Had To!

Monday is about movies, and sometimes TV. Today, the runaway success, the TV show almost everyone is talking about, and dozens of people checked in to see specifically what I thought of it...

Baby Reindeer ‘dropped’, as we all have to say these days, on Netflix nearly a month ago. Meaning it’s at peak watercooler conversation status currently. I clocked its arrival and planned to watch it straight away, but a funny thing happens in our house — shows don’t always get started straight away if both of the adults in the house want to watch it, because we’re both side-hustling away with our various things outside of a normal working day. And we like to watch TV together most of the time, and we like to know we can have the space if we do get a roll on; our TV-eyes are bigger than our TV stomachs…

Add the fact that precocious nearly-teen usually wants to be involved, and we have to do extra planning around how and when the shows we don’t yet want him to see do eventually get watched.

So TV watching is sometimes a bit of a production in and of itself. And it’s left up to me, mostly, to source the shows, and schedule them.

And then a funny thing happened with Baby Reindeer. I started getting a lot of messages about it, specifically inquiries as to what I thought/when would I be watching/why hadn’t I seen it already, etc. Look, it was almost hostile. Nearly a form of bullying, or, erm, you could say opinion-stalking…which is somewhat ironic.

People wanted to know. The number one comment or presumption was that it would be up my alley. And I figured this was around the ‘black humour’ that is mentioned in most blurbs. Someone else told me it was “awkward, and uncomfortable, and you love that shit, right?” And then there were the people that couldn’t deal with it at all — but still figured I could and would. Sample: “I could not watch it, it was so awkward but I imagine you will just love it!”

So, we made plans to get onto watching Baby Reindeer mid last week, and promptly skittled most of the series in one night, wrapping it up the following day. (It’s a very binge-able 7-part series of mostly 28-35 minute episodes).

And I’ll say, straight off, I did really like it. I loved it. And yes, episode one, which is the funniest, pulled me right in. It has some cringe moments, and I loved those. It’s unsettling, and I loved that. There’s immediate foreshadowing that things will take a much darker turn, And then all of it. All of it. All of it. And at once! And then again!

Basically I was this meme¹:

I was almost a little offended by how easily profiled I was, but then I decided to take it for the compliment it must be. Particularly since Baby Reindeer ain’t no Brown Bunny or Ken Park or Trash Humpers (and hey, I’ve seen all of them!) Baby Reindeer is actually quality television…

And its runaway word-of-mouth success has really been something.

By now, you’ll know — if you haven’t seen it — that it’s based on a true story. A struggling comedian is tending bar, and a woman comes in and pretty much starts to ‘stalk’ him. She’s lonely, he’s friendly, she needs the attention, and so does he.

But we know almost straight away that it is going to go further. Much further.

And that’s the thing, really, Baby Reindeer isn’t even really about stalking. It’s about many things — including (TRIGGER WARNING) sexual assault. But, really, it’s about the main character’s difficulties with finding himself, or admitting who he is to himself; the stalking — brutal, exhausting, terrifying, and sad — is just part of the story, a catalyst for all sorts of undoing.

It’s useful to now that Baby Reindeer was written by, and stars, the person it actually all happened to.

Scottish writer/comedian Richard Gadd developed the story, first, as a one-man-show. And then the Netflix series is a further development of that, a new iteration. Gadd has some writing credits for the BBC already, and worked on the Netflix hit, Sex Education. He has a few acting credits too, but it’s Baby Reindeer that will (properly) launch him. It’s Baby Reindeer he’ll be remembered for. Which is interesting, given so much of it is wrapped up in shame, guilt, and trauma — all spirals from a handful of events, the stalking being just one of them, but the catalyst for all of the unpacking, if not all of the unravelling.

The show features some amazing performances — three in particular.

Gadd of course, as Donny Dunn, the fictionalised Richard Gadd. Jessica Gunning as Martha Scott, the stalker. And Nava Mau as Teri, a therapist that Donny meets — but in a dating capacity, rather than as a therapist.

There are some killer-good needle-drops in the show too. The right songs being played at the right time.

But it’s the writing that really blew me away, the decision to make the show — and in this way. Writers mine their trauma in various ways, and can return to it and reuse it, but it would be churlish to suggest that they’re seeking it — by virtue of being a writer, they just happen to have a potential outlet for it. Everyone has trauma. Of some kind or another. If you are sure you don’t, you’re very lucky. (Maybe in the happy-go-lucky way even).

To say more about what happens in Baby Reindeer is really unfair in the early stages, when people maybe can’t help themselves from clicking on a headline, but have yet to finish the show. But I loved how empathic the writing, and the characters are here — okay, not all of them, obviously.

But I reckon there is a real care that’s been taken in the way the story unfolds.

And yet, you will read other headlines or listen to podcasts talking about how the show is already under fire, because fans are sleuthing all up in the internet to find the real “Martha”.

The internet has made sociopaths of many of us, and made others of us targets for this new, unsettling brand of psychopathy. Whatever happened to watching a show and just sitting with it. He says, as he essentially pantomimes that you were wise to click on his Baby Reindeer headline, but shouldn’t bother with any of the others.

Actually, I’m a huge fan of the writer and podcaster Tosh Berman. And I like what he said about the show, in his short piece here:

The Anxious Works of "Baby Reindeer" and "Seconds"

And I absolutely do recognise that Baby Reindeer will be too much for some people. And there are no badges of honour for surviving a TV show, just as there aren’t for surviving (in) life. You get on as best you can. And if Baby Reindeer just feels like it’s going to make you anxious or bring back any of the horrible stuff from your own life, then you are wise to not go all in. You should not ignore such instincts. The best TV shows, as with the best movies and music and books, and many things, are the ones that aren’t actually for everyone. So there’s that too. And that’s what makes Baby Reindeer so great to me: It really does have some edge to it. But it isn’t trauma-porn, there’s a purpose to it all. It’s smart, and risky, and often utterly brilliant.

Its ending, particularly so.

It’s hard to nail a really good ending.

Now, as if almost to prove exactly that, this is the part where I tell you, as far as I’m aware, not one of the people — friends, readers, acquaintances, fellow social media pests, office teammates, friends-of-friends — would have known, when they told me I had to watch this show, or needed to know if I liked it, that I too, have been stalked.

1. Which comes with bonus awkwardness/cringe/darkness choosing THAT MEME in 2024.