Baby Reindeer review: One of the best shows of the year so far, the heart-wrenching thriller continues Netflix’s tremendous 2024

Baby Reindeer review: One of the best shows of the year so far, the heart-wrenching thriller continues Netflix’s tremendous 2024

If it hasn’t happened already, someone at Apple has surely been deployed by now to check out the new Netflix limited series Baby Reindeer — a darkly comic horror story about one man’s harrowing experience with a middle-aged stalker. What that Apple employee will discover is a spectacular show that contains more mentions of the iPhone than what a tech journalist would find at Tim Cook’s annual Cupertino presentation. And while Baby Reindeer abides by the company’s rule of not allowing ‘antagonists’ to use their products in films and television, the complexity with which its characters are drawn must certainly have left Apple lawyers scratching their heads.

Based on Richard Gadd’s one-man stage play of the same name, Baby Reindeer is a seven-episode limited series that continues one of the finest runs that Netflix has had in years, a run that the streamer will surely sabotage with a new live-action anime adaptation or a half-hearted true crime series soon. Coming on the heels of masterpieces One Day and Ripley, Baby Reindeer presents an unsettling and ultimately heartbreaking account of one man’s pain, presented with a dollop of wry humour that only hindsight can afford.

Gadd stars as Donny, a 30-something wannabe comedian trapped in a dead-end job at a London bar. He is yanked out of his reverie one day, when a woman named Martha barges in through the doors. She’s weeping openly in that first meeting, and in an act of kindness that he might regret later, Donny offers her a cup of tea. Martha claims to be a hotshot lawyer who rubs shoulders with the likes of Tony Blair and Nigel Farage, but suspiciously, can’t even afford to buy herself a drink. Soon, she’s dropping by every day, happily claiming her free Diet Coke and telling more lies about her personal life. Not for a second does Donny believe her, but for some reason, he continues to humour Martha.

Played by Jessica Gunning in a jaw-dropping performance — she is both sinister and sorrowful — Martha’s laughter lights the entire bar on fire. And her presence brings a certain degree of cheer to Donny’s dour life. It doesn’t take too long for him to discover that Martha is a convicted stalker, who once spent four years in prison for making somebody’s life a living hell. But he doesn’t exactly tell her to back off. Even when she starts sending him hundreds of emails, every night, all signed off with, “Sent from my iPhone.”

Why? Why doesn’t Donny run to the police at the first sign of trouble? Why doesn’t he complain when Martha assaults him in an alleyway, or begins showing up at his house, or contacting his friends? Baby Reindeer anticipates these questions, which is perhaps why it begins with a cop asking them to Donny on the audience’s behalf. But then, something entirely unexpected happens in episode four — a flashback episode of sorts — as Donny recalls his months-long acquaintance with a hotshot comedy writer, who took him under his wing with false promises. What unfolds next reshapes how we view Donny, and re-contextualises everything that has happened to him so far, including the stalking and his apparent inaction. It’s not like he displays signs of the Stockholm Syndrome, nor does he ever lie to Martha about having fallen for her. But thanks mainly to Gadd and Gunning’s delicate performances, the show is able to avoid reducing Donny and Martha to archetypes.

Baby Reindeer is an uncommonly sensitive show, which cloaks under its true-crime aesthetic a heart so pure that you wonder if there’s any room for it at all in the big bad world of streaming. Gadd’s semi-autobiographical screenplay generates instant empathy for not just Donny, who is clearly in the doghouse even before you’re told why, but also Martha. Details about where she comes from are communicated in perhaps the most economically efficient manner possible. In just one sentence, you understand — at least partially — who she is, and why she’s so broken. But everybody’s broken in their own way, the show seems to be saying. In an alternate universe, Donny could have been the stalker and Martha the victim.

But describing it in these terms is reductive. Baby Reindeer isn’t really a show about stalking at all; it’s a show about decency, and whether we still have any room for it in our lives. Donny was simply being kind to a weeping Martha when he offered to buy her a cup of tea. He viewed the mentorship that he received from the hotshot comedy writer as an act of kindness as well. But his past experiences have mutated the very idea of decency in his mind. Baby Reindeer is the story of how Donny, and by extension Gadd, learned to hope again. It’s a monumental achievement in long-form storytelling, in expressing vulnerability through art, and in catharsis. Utterly unmissable.

Baby Reindeer

Creator – Richard Gadd

Cast – Richard Gadd, Jessica Gunning, Nava Mau, Tom Goodman-Hill

Rating – 4.5/5

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