Baby Reindeer spoilers follow.
Netflix's Baby Reindeer, a new one-man show by Richard Gadd, isn't the festive joyride you might expect from that title. No, Baby Reindeer is far, far darker than the name might have you believe.
The series follows a fictionalised version of Gadd named Donny Dunn who meets a woman in the pub where he works. What begins as flirty banter and an act of kindness soon unravels into something more sinister when "Martha" (Jessica Gunning) starts to stalk Donny incessantly in real life and on social media too.
What to Read Next
What's most disturbing about the sinister places this show takes us is that much of it is actually real. Gadd really did spend years dealing with a stalker who would turn up regularly at his workplace, at his comedy shows, and even outside his house, all under the guise of friendship — and in her eyes, something more.
Across a number of years, "Martha" sent Gadd a total of 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, and 106 pages of letters, as well as sleeping pills, a woolly hat, brand new boxer shorts and a cuddly reindeer toy — because that was her pet name for him. Baby Reindeer.
As horrifying as that all sounds, the police took years to act because each of these frightening behaviours were technically within the realms of legality.
It's no wonder that there's been a "stark rise" recently in the number of stalking cases reported to The Metropolitan Police, and that's just the cases that have been officially reported. ONS statistics estimate that 2.5 million people experience stalking in England and Wales every year, so as hard as Baby Reindeer is to watch at times, it's also an important series to see, especially as so much of it is true.
Back when Gadd took Baby Reindeer from Edinburgh Fringe to the West End in 2019, five years before it wound up as a TV show on Netflix, the comedian spoke with The Guardian at length about what had happened and what had led to this point.
Before Baby Reindeer, Gadd won the Edinburgh Comedy award for another deeply personal show named Monkey See Monkey Do, which saw the comedian pivot from his usual brand of humour to a striking confession about his experience as a victim of sexual assault.
This period in Gadd's life predated "Martha" by a few years, but episode four of Netflix's Baby Reindeer takes us back to that time in detail because the trauma of it all is deeply interwoven with how Gadd subsequently dealt with Martha.
"That was the worst part," Gadd told The Guardian in 2019. "It felt like I'd expunged the demons of one person who had caused me so much grief, only so that she [his stalker] could take centre stage in his place. It felt so awfully ironic."
Martha's stalking escalated just a few weeks after the win in 2016 during what should have been a time for joy and celebration. Yet Gadd is quick to suggest that he wasn't entirely blameless throughout this whole ordeal, an idea that Baby Reindeer foregrounds in extremely painful detail.
"I did loads of things wrong and made the situation worse," Gadd said back in his 2019 interview. "I wasn’t a perfect person [back then], so there's no point saying I was. And I know as I'm doing those sections that people are thinking I'm not a nice person – which make them difficult to perform."
Yet even though Gadd knew aspects of the story don't paint him in a favourable light either, "The show has been only lightly fictionalised", and that's true of the TV series as well because "The skeleton of the story is absolutely true."
The biggest changes made actually arose from efforts to make the story more watchable rather than more likeable: "The feeling you get most of all when you're getting harassed is relentless tediousness and frustration. I didn't want the audience to feel that."
However you might feel about Baby Reindeer in any of its incarnations, one thing you can't accuse it of is being boring. But aside from the horror of Gadd's journey with Martha, there's also plenty of frustration to be felt when it comes to how the police handled all this.
"I was getting told off for harassing the police about being harassed," says Gadd. All they suggested is that he essentially do their work for them by sifting through hours upon hours of Martha's cruel, abusive voicemails in the hope that she might say something incriminating that can be used again her.
That all comes to a head in the final episode of Baby Reindeer when Martha is finally arrested and given jail time, along with a restraining order that prevents her from contacting Gadd again.
In another 2019 interview, this time with The Independent, Gadd questioned his own culpability again in what happened between them:
"Where did my wrongdoing stop and hers begin? When she started doorstepping me? When she attacked me? I certainly egged the situation on before I realised that it was as dangerous as it was. I behaved like a prick at times."
"I can't emphasise enough how much of a victim she is in all this," Gadd continued. "When we think of stalkers, we always think of films like Misery and Fatal Attraction, where the stalker is a monstrous figure in the night down an alleyway. But usually, it's a prior relationship or someone you know or a work colleague. Stalking and harassment is a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to paint her as a monster, because she's unwell, and the system's failed her."
The system absolutely failed Martha, and it failed Gadd as well, which is one of the main reasons why he first wanted to share his story with the wider world, to inspire change and help others going through something similar.
"The laws surrounding harassment and abuse are so stupid," Gadd told The Independent, "because they look for black and white, good and evil, and that's not how it works. I could intimidate you by turning up to your workplace every day and getting a coffee over the road and staring through the window at you. You might feel very uncomfortable about that. But unless you can prove that there's some sort of physical threat, he can do as he pleases. That's really jeopardising your life. But you can really affect someone's life within the parameters of legality, and that is sort of mad."
However, Gadd blames "the lack of funding, the lack of training, the lack of understanding, the lack of support for the victims," rather than the police force itself. "Fundamental change" is needed, he points out. "I don't want to be the clichéd artist slagging off the government, but it needs overhaul and funding and there needs to be massive systemic change."
You'd think that sharing his story on such huge, public platforms like Fringe, the West End, and now Netflix, might result in renewed efforts from Martha, but in that aforementioned Guardian interview, he revealed that there had been no contact still since the conviction: "Maybe seeing this in the press has made her think twice about her behaviour."
That was in 2019 though, so what about now?
Ahead of Baby Reindeer's Netflix debut, Gadd penned a new essay where he reflects on releasing "the exact same themes to the world, the exact same moral quandaries. Only this time, on a much larger scale. In a lot more detail. To a wider spectrum of people and an audience two-hundred million times the size."
There's no mention of Martha's current whereabouts, but more importantly than that, Gadd talks about the impact revisiting all this has had on him now in 2024, saying:
"I would be lying if I said I was not back exactly where I was all those years ago in 2019 at the Edinburgh Fringe. Fearing the worst. Praying for the best. Hoping that in amongst all the messy, complicated, f**ked up, themes Baby Reindeer throws at you that people might take notice of its beating heart."
However you might end up feeling about the show, especially if it's your first introduction to Gadd's story, it's safe to say that this "beating heart" he speaks of will resonate regardless.
Because no, this isn't an easy show to watch, but the truth behind it is an important one that will mean a lot to the people who need it most.
Baby Reindeer is now available to watch on Netflix.
We would encourage anyone who identifies with the topics raised in this article to reach out. Call 999 if you or anyone you know is in immediate danger, or report any concerning situations using UK government resources or the Paladin National Stalking Advocacy Service. The National Stalking Helpline is open 9.30am-4pm on weekdays (and until 8pm on Wednesdays) on 0808 802 0300.
After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
