A few minutes after the start, when the screen reads “created and written by Richard Gadd”, bam, the flashback has arrived. It was 2019, the holiday in Scotland had Edinburgh as its last stop, I didn’t know there was the Fringe Festival, but how cool. In a couple of days I see I don’t know how many things, including – I’m going from memory – a (hilarious) parody of game of Thronesa (sensational) improvisation by Doctor Who it’s a coming of age (also comedy) by Lord Voldemort. And then other little things too, but NOT Baby Reindeer. Once there were no tickets, the next day it overlapped with another show, the day after who still remembers. And nothing, I ended up missing the show that everyone was talking about, also because a few years earlier, again at the Fringe, Gadd had won the comedy award with Monkey See Monkey Dowhich already chronicled the abuse and confusion that followed (and yes, you can’t help but think of THAT monologue).
Edmund Burke wrote it in the mid-18th century, and then obviously the Romantics: “Everything that can arouse ideas of pain and danger is sublime, that is, everything that is in a certain sense terrible or that concerns terrible objects, or that acts in analogous to terror.” And I don’t know about you, but that’s what came to mind while watching, in a crazy and desperate binge-watching, Baby Reindeer. Which is a beautiful series, but which at the same time terrifies, in a constant dichotomy of adjectives that almost everyone is using to define it: funny and devastating, painful and sarcastic, dark and brilliant, and so on. The only one who at the moment seems to have found an effective synthesis is Stephen King, who commented as follows: “Holy shit“.
Let’s start from the basics, in case you haven’t ended up over it yet (or rather: under it) during the usual multiplatform zapping in search of “things to see” (even if it seems difficult, given the chatter generated and Netflix’s constant position at number 1 in as a “thing to see” to make a good impression at dinner parties). Baby Reindeer, literally “baby reindeer”, is the nickname given to the protagonist by his stalker and is the adaptation of the play of the same name by Gadd, a 34-year-old Scottish comedian, actor and screenwriter. It’s a true, semi-autobiographical story: on screen there is a slightly fictionalized version of the creator and protagonist, Donny, an aspiring comedian who works in a London pub to make ends meet. Here one day he offers a cup of tea to an older woman, Martha (one must bow to Jessica Gunning, herself drama school by Gary Oldman and a wild ability to convey three different moods in the space of three seconds), which slowly begins to creep into his life (and his head) until it destroys it. From 2015 to 2018, he allegedly sent him more than 41 thousand (ungrammatical) emails, 350 hours of voice messages, 744 tweets, letters and disturbing gifts such as the famous toy reindeer.
What is disorienting, however, and what makes the story so unique, is that Donny finds an inexplicable comfort in Martha’s obsession with him. And in every borderline situation he constantly thinks, says and does the wrong thing, in an escalation of co-dependency and even affection that goes well beyond the bizarre. Because somehow it is his experience with her that forces him to face the trauma of past violence that broke him and to come to terms with her sexuality. And it is the direction (by Weronika Tofilska and Josephine Bornebusch) that transforms this much less unambiguous relationship than one might think into a high-voltage psychological thriller, with even horror undertones (and a great soundtrack, from Brian Eno to Jethro Tull): the suspense, the deformation of spaces and faces, the points of view, the twists. Chapeau also to how the most heartbreaking episode by far was conceived and shot, that of the violence on the part of the TV veteran and veteran predator, Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill), who confuses, shocks, disgusts without however ever lapsing into ‘exploitation.
Released on April 11th without any kind of promotion, Baby Reindeer it became a hit in a couple of weeks thanks to word of mouth and probably also thanks to that “based on a true story” which – in turn – triggered another obsession in the public, now accustomed to true crime: that of finding the figures who inspired the characters of Martha and Darrien in reality, to the point that the police were involved and Gadd himself asked the most morbid on Instagram to stop involving people he knows in their ruminations. More: a woman who claims to be the now famous stalker said in an interview with Daily Mail that she feels exploited by the situation and that, at this point, she is Gadd’s victim.
But Baby Reindeer it’s much more than a stalking story (which by comparison You seems like a cartoonish dark comedy): it is an exhausting and brutal immersion not only in mental illness, but also in the fragility of the human condition in general, a vulnerable, raw and authentic story of how traumas can echo in every aspect of the existence of who has suffered them and how shame can inhibit us from seeking help even from those closest to us. Of course, as he writes Rolling USfits in the wake of the confessional series in which the star is also creator and where the material is often, but not always, autobiographical, you see Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (another phenomenon born at the Fringe) e I May Destroy You by Michaela Coel. It’s a giant step for Gadd and a big leap for seriality. Even if that sofa has never seemed so uncomfortable to you.
