Yahoo News Baby Reindeer is the worst thing I've seen on television in a long time — dire on all fronts
Cardboard cut out characters, cliches and tropes make Netflix drama Baby Reindeer torture, but not in the way it intended. I hate this show and that’s not because I don’t like uncomfortable subject matter - it's the unconvincing story-telling.
The Netflix series has been touted as an important and meaningful comment on female stalkers. Everyone is raving about it. Having watched every tortuous episode I’m not convinced it’s a helpful addition to any debate that may, or may not be being had, about stalking. But it’s definitely the worst drama I’ve seen on television in a long time.
Actually, I’m not sure it is a drama at all. It’s more a self-inflicted wound and act of narcissism by writer and comedian Richard Gadd. Perhaps Gadd and Donny Dunn, the fictionalised version of Gadd, really is a nice guy. Maybe he’s not someone using another person’s desperate misery to first mistakenly massage his ego and now project his name in lights - who knows? Download WalesOnline’s Premium app on Apple or Android.
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For those of you who’ve missed the hype, or haven’t seen it, Baby Reindeer is the supposedly true life experience of a male victim of female sexual stalking. So far so depressing, but hell, it’s an important issue that doesn’t get enough airtime, so I decided to give it a go (although you’ll all forgive me for thinking male on female stalking is more of an issue - and there’s some of that in here too).
The seven-part Netflix drama, which started life as a stage play, is supposedly based on a true story of an experience Gadd had being stalked. In the show Donny is hit with 40,000 emails, 740 tweets, 350 hours of voicemails, 100 pages of letters, and 45 Facebook messages from his stalker, Martha Scott.
Baby Reindeer is the creepy name Martha calls him as she bombards him with obsessive messages and visits to the pub where he works. Martha is a lonely fantasist who he meets when she comes into the bar. Feeling sorry for Martha, Donny asks her out for coffee and she quickly gets the wrong idea. Her "victim", it’s clear, is also quite enjoying his supply of adoration, albeit from someone he secretly despises and looks down on whilst pretending to be her friend - it all makes him feel superior and admired.
Things get even better for his ego when she turns up in the audience at one of his comedy gigs. Martha's heckles and his riposte turn the hitherto excruciatingly bad act into a success.
It’s clear to Donny/Gadd, and the viewer, that Martha is a slightly threatening presence early on. But she really has no hold over him, if only he'd do what most of us would and block her number and emails . Good grief, he could even run away, but no. Instead he runs to her, even doing some fly-by stalking himself. He could have nipped all this in the bud, but on the screen he’s weak and dull and self-obsessed. And he sucks up lonely Martha's adoration in the trauma bond thing.
There would be no tale, no TV commission and no fame if Donny/Gadd acted like a sensible and kind human being. Crucially, he could have cut off his sinister supply of adoration. There’s a moment on a canal path when Donny shouts at Martha to leave him alone and stop following him. It’s laughable that he walks, rather than runs, away from his pursuer.
Now, I don’t want to downplay the mind games stalkers can play, but am I the only one to feel that it’s barely credible that a fit and healthy man, in his 30s, cannot run away from his middle-aged stalker?
Maybe Gadd was a genuine victim of stalking, but this depiction feels so unrealistic it risks downplaying the dreadful toll of genuine female to male stalking. Or any stalking for that matter.
At one point the fictional Donny even stalks Martha himself, following her to her pitiful flat and watching her through the window as she emails him. It’s a mutual thrill all right and he knows, deep down, that Martha will lose in the end, however much he’s freaked out by her endless messaging.
The tedious demonisation of Martha starts to feel gratuitous. I felt more sorry for her than Gadd/Donny, which may have been the point, but I’m not sure, because the storytelling fell down and the characters are cardboard cut outs from the get go.
The only thing that redeems the series is the marvellous Jessica Gunning as Martha. Her depiction of a mentally ill woman-come-stalker is superb. She is at turns repulsive, pitiful, weak, strong, both preyed upon and preying. Without Gunning, this show would surely not have got off the ground.
Her character is written as a one dimensional mad, fat, middle-aged woman type but her skill is finding other dimensions not in the script. I loved Gunning in BBC’s The Outlaws, an altogether superior drama with witty script and clever characterisation.
Gadd’s character in Baby Reindeer is a stalking victim, yet he appears manipulative enough to play Martha for what he wants and canny enough to take advantage of his ex-girlfriend’s mother’s kind heart and cheap rent for a place to live. And it’s all just unrealistic. I couldn’t believe in Gadd, I couldn’t believe in his ex girlfriend, or her mother, or his work colleagues at the pub. Or his father who suddenly reveals he was raped by a Catholic cleric.
All is cliché after cliché. From the mad woman, to the sexist men in the pub, to the saintly ex-girlfriend and her even more saintly mother, to the tortured and lonely comedian. Even the policeman he goes to for help is a dithering, unhelpful PC plod.
Not sure how I got to the end, but I made myself finish Baby Reindeer so could give it a chance . It's dire. On all fronts. Bad storytelling. Cardboard cut-out characters and fleeting moments of weird sexual desires. Who cares? And we should, because stalking is an important matter. Oh and the supposedly real-life Martha isn’t keen on it either. So watch this space for a follow lucrative follow up. . For the latest TV & Showbiz news, sign up to our newsletter.
