Baby Reindeer Review

The one positive thing about coming a bit late to a series – in this case, a week after it was released – is that you get to watch how the discourse surrounding the series starts to shape up. First, there’s usually the breathless questions around your social circle: “Have you watched it? What did you think? If you haven’t, you need to see it!” Then, there are the thinkpieces, picking apart the series, the writing, the concept, and, in the case of Baby Reindeer, detailing just how the internet managed to do what it always does when presented with an intriguing mystery: uncover the secret identities (or, in a more insidious turn, determine that an incorrect person was the inspiration for a truly odious character) and doxx those folks for the world to see. And, at this stage of the game, it’s impossible to review this limited series solely on its own merits. Because so much has transpired in the last week to turn what was a complex and darkly crafted semi-autobiographical piece into something far bigger than that.

As a series, Baby Reindeer has been positively compared to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, in that it’s an unflinching look at a single character as they navigate through their own trauma and try to come out of the other side with some idea of who they are and what they should do with their life. But, in my opinion, the comparison should end there, as Baby Reindeer is positing to do something a bit different than Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag character. Baby Reindeer may be telling the story of a fictional man named Donny Dunn, but it is, as the series tells us from the jump (and the Netflix social media accounts have pushed with statements that all the emails shown in the series were really sent to star and creator Richard Gadd) that this is based on a true story. This, or, at least some version of this, story really happened to Gadd. These characters that surround him are based on real people.

And it’s that statement – that there are real versions of these characters out there in the world – where Baby Reindeer becomes less of an exercise in telling a story about how a man was stalked by an older, mentally unstable woman (following a harrowing series of sexual assaults carried out by a powerful male writer/producer several years earlier) and just what all of that trauma did to him in the moment, and turns into a story that has the potential to shift into a mystery that might just be too intriguing not to solve.

As a piece of dramatic art, Baby Reindeer is incredibly hard to watch, but also incredibly well made. Gadd is exceptional, crafting the story as the creator and writer, and then translating it through the character of Dunn in such a way that it’s impossible not to be drawn into by his performance and its place in the story. Likewise, our villains, Jessica Gunning as Martha and Tom Goodman-Hill as Darien, are far more complicated that one might expect out of a piece like this one. When it comes to Martha, Gadd is careful to not show her hand too quickly, allowing Gunning the chance to create a fully realized character. Sure, we know that she’s going to become a stalker from her first appearance – Gadd and Gunning make that clear – but we can also understand why Dunn (and, in turn, Gadd) felt empathy for her during their early meetings, and how this lonely and lost man found some level of validation in their relationship, such as it was. Similarly, we know something is off with Darien from the jump, but Gadd and Goodman-Hill don’t come right out and reveal the grooming that is taking place. Instead, we experience that slow building of the trust between a much more successful and powerful man in Darien and a desperate to be seen and liked younger man in the character of Dunn. We know how this is going to end – and we can piece together how this trauma influenced much of what happened with regard to Dunn and Gadd’s response to Martha – but the slow trickle of this part of the story makes the horror of it hit all the harder.

So, as a series, Baby Reindeer is exceptional. But we can’t simply talk about the series within a vacuum. Rather, we also need to reckon with how putting this story out into the world via Netflix has inspired some viewers to see the “true story” aspect of the series as a challenge to figure out just who might be lurking behind the different characters. And that gives me pause when it comes to lauding the series for what it does well. Because what is doesn’t do well is insulate those individuals Gadd talks about in his narrative. It doesn’t protect them from the onslaught of conversation, investigation, and ultimately, doxxing, that has happened since the series went live on Netflix. Now, one might argue that the real-life Martha and Darien don’t deserve anonymity – especially Darien, who we don’t see get punished for his alleged actions as laid out in the series. But neither of these individuals had the chance to provide approval for this series. And, as was the case with an individual the internet suspected of being Darien, no one in Gadd’s personal orbit presumably asked to potentially get dragged into the internet sleuthing game (for that individual, being accused of being a rapist is a pretty horrific thing to experience, especially when Gadd has since told folks that he isn’t the inspiration for any character in the series and begged them to stop trying to discover the real-life counterparts for any characters).

And before you say that there was no way to know that folks on the internet would latch onto this series and try to treat it like a puzzle box, come on now, you know better. And Netflix absolutely knows better – they stream more than enough true crime docudramas to understand that their viewers are going to take something like this series and run with it, for better or for worse. Having Netflix’s socials touting the accuracy of the production – the aforementioned “real emails and texts” post in particular – only served to stoke the already simmering fire. Getting a hit series is a boon for a streamer these days – especially one that captures general critical acclaim to go with becoming a huge part of the zeitgeist – but forgetting the potential costs to the humans portrayed within it? Yeah, that’s not great.

So, where do I stand on Baby Reindeer? If you are someone who can stomach a series that deals with these types of deep personal traumas, well, it’s a truly special series with some absolutely impressive performances at the heart of it. But if you’re someone who might be tempted to dive into the rabbit hole and try to unmask the real people behind this story inspired by real events – please don’t. Art can just be art, whether it’s a cathartic series like this one, raising awareness of some of the painful horrors that can happen to a seemingly normal, kind guy or something more fantastical. And this is a hell of a piece of art.

Baby Reindeer is streaming on Netflix.