The first information that the Baby Reindeer series tells us is “this is a real story”. And because of this, the production that premiered on Netflix on April 11th has been generating worldwide discussions. The theme is current, out of place, and scary: a stalker and her victim. It’s tense, it’s realistic and extremely well acted and like everyone who loves to know what’s behind what we see, it’s natural and impulsive to look for “the true story” that inspired the play and now the series. However, Richard Gadd, who plays the victim, comedian Donny Dunn, who despairs of his stalker, Martha (Jessica Gunning), makes a request: stop looking for the “real” Martha. It’s fair?
In a moment I’ll talk about the series itself, which is the adaptation of the material that Richard took to the Edinburgh Festival in 2019 and is now being dramatized in eight episodes and is inspired by the actor’s own experience. The discomfort of following the drama is immediate, especially because it goes straight to the point with the author’s extreme sincerity. Everyone wants to know that it’s the “real” Martha and if you didn’t anticipate what’s happening, here’s a tip: don’t tell them it’s a real story.
The wave of seeking out real stories has been a constant trend in recent years and I “blame” reality shows. Inventing has lost its charm, authenticity is an obsession that finds no answer in fiction. And yes, knowing that the story is true gives credibility and another dimension to the series.
That said, the reason for the author’s appeal makes sense. “Internet detectives” are not satisfied with a Google search, they want to “solve” the crime. They located the likely real Martha and speculated wildly and openly about her identity. “Please do not speculate about who any of the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show,” he pleaded.
Want ironic. The series is about an attacker he unsuspectingly brought into his life and now he’s not only rekindling the wound, he’s awakened an army of digital invaders.
A great suspense and a delicate theme
In times of social networks, the multiplication of stalkers only makes this crime take on frightening proportions. And Baby Reindeer walks us through how a series of wrong decisions can put people at unimaginable risks.
How did Donny (Gadd) get into the trap? Because he felt sorry for Martha (Gunning) and when he realized she was chasing him it was too late. Her sympathy for her is just the beginning of thousands of unwanted messages, the constant presence of an older woman who is more than inconvenient, she is clearly a person who needs help. And here’s the quality of Baby Reindeer: the series also focuses on the emotional impacts of persecution on both the perpetrator and the victim and on the people in Donny’s life. Over three years, Martha sent more than 41,000 emails, and left 350 hours of voice messages totaling 350 hours, in addition to messages on social media and 106 pages of letters.
What’s interesting is that Donny doesn’t victimize himself, he shamelessly exposes himself, from his shame in admitting his relationship with a trans woman to the abuse he suffered as a child. The drama he experienced, as well as those who deal with crime in real life, is that for outsiders it is sometimes complex to define where criminal harassment begins and even worse, how to deal with it before something more tragic happens. The series begins with Donny asking the police for help after six months of trying to deal with the situation alone but scared when she attacks his girlfriend (Nava Mau).
In real life, Gadd managed to get a restraining order against “Martha,” but problems followed. There was criticism that his play – which places a man as the victim and a woman as the aggressor – was sexist, but he wanted to share the hell that is today one of the greatest social dangers. His fear only increased when he saw that it was very difficult to deal with the problem legally.
As he commented in an interview in 2019, he was wrong to identify that “Martha” needed help without understanding how stalking works. “‘Stalking is a mental illness and it comes from some kind of fantasy addiction, this idea that this person is the answer to all your problems, so you will only hear what you want, disregard the rest,” he commented. “When I was going through this, I felt like it was an important story to tell… [and] that was important for people to understand,” he added.
A trauma that led him to another
In a self-analysis, Donnie, like the actor, is a survivor of sexual assault that, in a tortuous way, makes him empathize with Martha’s problems. He knows and feels the guilt of many survivors, who are ashamed of feeling deceived or manipulated, in other words, “guilty” for what happened to them.
“On a fundamental level, we see sexual abuse on television – not all the time – but often as an anonymous figure in the middle of the night,” he said in 2019. “But a lot of abuse happens in power dynamics, in work dynamics, in relationship dynamics. , on all these kinds of things. I hadn’t really seen the psychological complexity of this very often on television and I really wanted to show the perniciousness of the preparation cycle. , as much as the cycle of abuse.
As much as I understand Richard Gadd’s current drama of trying to create a boundary where he feels safe to share his story and still deal with privacy, it’s a bit confusing. The play itself was already extremely public, but taking it to the most popular platform in the world, Netflix is telling millions of people “a story inspired by a real one” and then asking them not to be curious to know more.
And no, it is not Martha who is “investigated”, but Donny’s abuser.
And is it worth watching the series?
OK. It’s well-constructed, well-edited, and extremely brave. Richard Gadd never villainizes his attacker to the point of making her superficial, and this by giving the correct context of her role in everything. I would say that facing discomfort is extremely important, an important content.
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