“Are you up to episode four?”
That’s almost certainly the reply you get when you tell people that you’re watching Netflix’s new viral series Baby Reindeer…
The show has catapulted its writer and star Richard Gadd into the global spotlight, telling the real(ish)-life story of his encounters with a stalker, the sexual abuse he suffered, and his subsequent attempts to understand himself emotionally and sexually. Did we mention it’s a comedy?
In the first episode, we meet struggling comedian and barman Donny (Gadd) and his soon-to-be stalker Martha (Jess Gunning), as she wanders into the pub he’s working in. The camera is edged in on Donny as his relationship with Martha develops, painstakingly allowing us to see the gears in his brain tick over as he realises that Martha’s obsession with him is not healthy.
It’s a kind of squirm porn. You’re seeing a character slip down a path that will only lead to bad things and no matter how much you’re yelling at the TV, telling him to get out, there’s a voice inside your own head saying keep going. And, as you’ve probably heard from anyone who’s beaten you to watching the show, it does not let up.
Even Donny’s prop-heavy stand up routine is tough to watch, with Gadd clearly taking digs at his comedy routines as a 20-something. It’s the show’s hook in a bottle. You’re watching someone slowly crumble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eafm1gB6SCM
Gadd’s real-life stalker sent him a total of 41,041 emails, left over 350 hours of voicemail messages, and wrote 106 pages of letters and many social media messages. These are utilised perfectly in the show, with bumbling, raunchy and weird emails breaking up the scenes and soliciting a giggle or cringe each time.
The emails are unchanged from the originals Gadd received and are signed off with “sent from my iPhone” despite Martha never owning an iPhone:
havnt seen u on ur street in a whyle fckn cowarded off hav u? cant handle addrssin me like a man? lil bitch Sent from my iPhone
Donny’s relationship with a trans woman, Teri (Nava Mau), is flourishing while Martha finds new ways of harassing him. Teri, a therapist and glimmering light in Donny’s glib life, is the common-sense voice. She says all the shit we’re screaming at the TV.
So why doesn’t he listen to her/us?
For the sake of the story, Donny is something of an unreliable narrator, never fully revealing why he can’t get control of the issues in his life (his reluctance to get the police involved with Martha and crumbling relationship with Teri), until episode four…
This will probably go down as one of the most talked about episodes in streaming this year, but within those conversations around the water cooler, on X, or wherever the fuck people talk about this kind of thing, very little will be said other than something to the effect of “fuck, that was heavy.”
In this ep, we flashback to see the grooming of Donny by a successful older TV showrunner named Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill), culminating in an eventual drug-fuelled rape. The scenes at Darrien’s apartment are glowing red. Donny has been lured by the show’s true villain into this hellish nightmare.
Although he’s yet to understand it himself, this trauma marks the turning point of the series, the explainer behind Donny’s inability to be anything other than prey, the reason he doesn’t trust his own feelings, why he hates himself.
The whole show feels like a horror story. The sound design is jumpy, the streets are often empty, even the happy days have a weird feel to them. After the fourth episode, you understand why. The trauma of Darrien has turned Donny’s life into a horror.
The master stroke is that the series is structured like a stretched out version of Gone Girl or fellow trauma-comedy Manchester By The Sea. We become aware of the key incident somewhere in the middle and knowingly watch the character reckon with it from that point.
Gadd and Mau are excellent on screen, but Gunning’s portrayal of Martha is next level as she sways between depraved psycho, mentally ill pity sponge, and foul-mouthed menace effortlessly. She has permission to take things up to 11 and does so throughout, all the while putting on this Fat Bastard-esque Scottish accent.
It feels weird to say that I “loved” this series about trauma, stalking and sex. But it seems that, with Baby Reindeer being a global hit, I’m not alone in enjoying the skin crawling moments, the prolonged icks, and the intense scenes.
Although it’s one of those series where you need to watch a comedown show after each sitting (personally, I blast a few episodes of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia to get back on the level), Baby Reindeer is one of the most interesting pieces of media you will see this year.
If you’re one of those people that rolls your eyes every time you hear someone preach “representation is in storytelling is important”, then maybe you won’t dig this. But, to me, it’s the most freshest piece of evidence that opening up to queer and unique stories is not only “important” from the standpoint of understanding people better, but also can make for some immersive watching.
We need more idiosyncratic stories told in daring ways.
I’ll give it 4.5 iPhones out of 5.
