“Baby Reindeer” mania has already swept the U.K., and the word-of-mouth export continues to make waves across the U.S., hence our belated review about an incredibly devastating and twisting series that is so much more than you initially expected.
There’s a natural tendency in most savvy viewers to predict how events might unfold in any film or televised event. For years, Netflix established itself as a contender in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction sweepstakes with the murder-for-hire animal park drama (“Tiger King”) or plunges into the darkest realms of internet video (“Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer”). However, with “Baby Reindeer,” which defies expectations and convention by detouring into the heartwrenchingly personal, it’s probably wise to leave one’s guessing game tendencies at the door. Based on a one-man play by Richard Gadd, portraying a version of himself as he recalls a bleak and traumatic period in his life (and yes, based on some real-life events), what unfolds is startingly unpredictable. A mix of comedic and horrific, and then an astonishing concoction of both— the terrifying moment where a joke suddenly ceases to be funny and record scratches into the unspeakably painful—“Baby Reindeer” takes so many shockingly unexpected and disturbing turns into the dark psyches of the soul that it may leave you breathless.
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“Baby Reindeer” starts innocently enough, but its surprising series twists veer into many psychologically gnarly and degrading places. Gadd plays Donny, an unassuming bartender working his shift, when the appearance of a sad-looking woman, Martha (Jessica Gunning), catches his eye. Seemingly sympathetic to her downhearted mien, a simple beverage offer on the house sets the aggressively spiraling events in motion. This harmless act of kindness is like a shock of emotional rocket fuel, propelling Martha into a daily routine of frequenting Donny’s pub, incessantly chatting up the beleaguered bartender as she explosively expounds on topics ranging from her high-profile career as an attorney to her overall fascination with Donny himself. Given the mania of this sudden connection, it’s not entirely surprising when this largely one-sided dialogue goes digital. Donny now receives countless poorly written emails, and Martha’s demeanor quickly shifts from an annoyingly relentless presence to something much more ominous.
So, it appears this is a show about a clingy and unwell stalker. And while this is true, it’s really just the entrée to something much darker. Martha grows progressively more unhinged, and as the protagonist learns of her frightening repeat-offender stalker past, you may find yourself deeply agitated with Donny’s reluctance to get the police involved and his strangely enabling behavior.
Eventually, much of the reasoning behind these seemingly inexplicable decisions is revealed, and it’s arguably the true heart of the show. Still, however brilliantly structured, sometimes it feels exasperating in the moment. Midway through telling this growingly frustrating obsession story, “Baby Reindeer” pivots into a long detour, flashing back and revealing much about Donny’s disconcerting and troubled past.
Because Donny has harbored ambitious, beyond-the-pub dreams of becoming a successful stand-up comedian one day. Donny’s schtick is essentially anti-comedy, perhaps so unfunny it’s funny; a routine replete with props and gags that seem like they’re from an outdated yesteryear’s era of hacky stand-up. And the desperate need for self-approval and humiliations endemic to comedic failure only worsen what’s to come.
The comedy of it all essentially takes place on two timelines, in the present day and the past. When Donny resumes his comedy routine in the present day, his self-esteem grows, and Martha appears in the audience. Boosting his confidence, it seems like he doesn’t mind her at all being around, given how much she helps his rickety performances. But things go south when a new revelation comes to light: Donny’s been concealing a secretive relationship with a trans woman, Teri (Nava Mau), whom he cares for and likes, but the shame of it all makes him keep it all on the down low.
As Martha’s deterioration grows worse, it becomes cataclysmically psycho when Martha becomes aware of Teri. Martha’s madness escalates, and she soon starts turning up at Donny’s home with his ex-girlfriend’s mother. Even Donny’s parents start receiving threatening phone calls, and just when “Baby Reindeer” cannot feel more alarmingly fever-pitched, it somehow ratches up wildly to another level.
Even when Donny finally reports her to the authorities, he purposely withholds revealing all the details of the situation, which is initially maddening (honestly, “Baby Reindeer” often feels like a horror film at first where the audience is screaming at the idiotic protagonist to continue not making terribly stupid decisions).
The next surprise “Baby Reindeer” turn is also in the past and grows even more f*cked-up, grim, and depressingly depraved. Without too many spoilers, it becomes a chilling story of abuse and manipulation. In this part of the backstory, Tom Goodman-Hill plays Darrien, a seductive, gaslighting television writer who takes Donny under his wing, promising to make all his dreams about comedy and fame come true. Instead, it plunges Donny down a seedy world of traumatic horror, all in the dishonest, calculated guise of making him famous.
While gruesome, shocking, and often appalling, this degenerate section elucidates why Donny tolerated Martha for so long. And it’s a white-hot, distressingly frank, and vulnerable psychological tale of shame, insecurity, shattered ego, self-doubt, and crippled self-confidence. What it ultimately reveals, as well, is a show that’s infinitely more layered and intricate than just a stalker narrative, a genre arguably exploited as a Trojan Horse ruse to explore something much more emotionally complex, damaged, and anguishing.
This technique is the seducing, thematically apt genius of “Baby Reindeer,” luring you in with the familiarity of a horror film trope—a man, seemingly foolish and kind enough to enable his own stalker—only to reveal a years-in-therapy dread about the haunting effects of trauma and agonizing experience of shatteringly cruel maltreatment.
In many ways, “Baby Reindeer” defies convention and genre, with little precedent for it other than the genre of harrowing emotional terror, though to be fair, it could be the descendant or natural next-step evolution of “I May Destroy You,” which also brilliantly utilized pitch-black comedy to unpack and unburden deep, dark traumas.
One particular episode and section where Donny admits his exploitation and mistreatment is particularly wrenching, and yet still filled with so many heartening surprises in a real testament to Gadd’s series sense of heartbreaking empathy, authenticity, and compassion, even as it takes such a ruthlessly blunt look at all his various mistakes. Another sometimes brutal, bracingly honest element of the “Baby Reindeer” saga is the way the series considers how complicit Gadd is in all this pain: his self-destructiveness, self-sabotage, and self-loathing as facilitator to his abuse and horrors.
Endlessly complicated and uncomfortable even to a fault, “Baby Reindeer” can still frustrate even as it amazes and awes with its direct and upsetting revelations. One vexatious, temple-rubbing moment when Martha reveals she’s secretly recorded all their conversations almost feels like the shark jump gone too far in the stalker chronicle. Yet, “Baby Reindeer” can still steer things back to its incredible mix of enrapturing obsession horror and “my god, what the hell will happen next?” sense of overwhelmed astonishment.
Fortunately, frustrations are often tempered thanks to the confessional nature of Gadd’s story, reaching its zenith thanks to a climactic monologue delivered by Donny during a stand-up festival in which his breakdown takes center stage, quite literally. Gadd’s relationship with Teri has a fascinating psychological texture. Nearly problematic in the way it almost conflates abuse with queer sexuality, it often puts the character’s uncertainties, insecurities, and fears about judgment on the hot seat. Mau is terrific, and every word spoken appears tailor-made to cue another reflection on the endless self-examining questions, a testament to the flow of Gadd’s writing and articulate self-aware voiceover.
For all its mesmerizing, forthright elements—the questioning notions of sexuality also deeply fascinating— Gunning’s performance as Martha is arguably the MVP, creating a persona just as incensing as it’s surprisingly sympathetic. For all of her insane actions, including a violent sequence where she assaults Teri, “Baby Reindeer” takes pains to show genuinely tender moments between the characters and deliver more understanding of the troubled woman and her suffering.
From a maddening, thrilling stalker ride to an uncompromising probe inside a tragically broken man, “Baby Reindeer” often becomes unbearably dark as it lands on the agonizing notion of how to hurt people, in turn, hurt people. In particular, Gadd’s tearful confession about how his various ordeals have left him accustomed to the way with which he hates himself is staggeringly gut-wrenching. There’s a rich complexity here, and the show refuses to end it with a feeling of fulfillment as the credits roll.
A cross between an unanticipated roller coaster ride and an emotional odyssey in its sprawling zigzags, “Baby Reindeer” might sometimes be a difficult, exhausting watch. Still, the unforeseen, often wounding journey is nonetheless unbelievably gripping in its confrontational exploration of all the destructive, harmful things we do in the name of self-approbation, even if it’s as simple as seeking a gratifying laugh. Gadd’s courageous, unflinching decision to reexamine the suffering of this excruciating time and ferociously interrogate it, his shame, guilt, remorse, and self-reproach, is essential and ultimately healing stuff. If “Baby Reindeer” has become much-discussed, much-watch television, well, the provocative, challenging, and unremittingly honest show has earned it. [A-]