Repeat Offenders Section Editor Nic Chang is back with yet another insightful visual media review, this time focusing on Netflix’s infamous new miniseries.
Content warning: this article discusses stalking, male rape and sexual assault. For support, please head to 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
Making shows is hard. It’s about committing to your vision, making compromises and seeing it through to the end. But when this show revolves around not just your real-life traumatic experiences but your re-enactments, it’s a brave decision. It’s bold to tell your story with your voice and to be honest with it, knowing fully well that your art is open to critique and that your audience will most likely make criticisms of your actions. And it’s because Baby Reindeer comes from a place of truth, emotional rawness and brutal honesty, that Richard Gadd’s story deserves to be listened to.
Donny Dunn (Gadd), a struggling comedian attempting to pursue his ambitions, works at his local pub until he notices Martha Scott (Jessica Gunning) showing up in the midst of her emotional breakdown. Empathising with her immediately, Donny hands her a cup of tea for free and talks with her. The next several days, Martha repeatedly shows up, claiming she’s in a rush as she works as a lawyer… but always staying behind and flirting with Donny, calling him a “baby reindeer.” Whenever Donny is outside work, he keeps getting emails from Martha. Whenever Donny says something that Martha doesn’t like, she’s prone to public outbursts. And whenever Donny’s trying to pursue his comedy career or his dating, Martha’s there. And she refuses to leave.
To call Baby Reindeer painful wouldn’t do it justice. This is a series that left me laughing (and feeling guilty immediately afterwards), cringing, frustrated, and distressed. In its early episodes, you’ll likely shout at the screen over Donny’s passive behaviour. “Go to the police already!” “Stop enabling her!” “Put an end to this madness!” And you’d think about being in Donny’s shoes and doing these things early.
Except… it’s not that simple. The relationship between the abuser and the victim doesn’t end like that in reality. What Baby Reindeer captures is how two broken, self-destructive individuals become attracted, whether explicitly or implicitly, to one another, and it’s not just that it becomes too late to recognise the toxicity of one’s obsession, but how easy it is to become drawn to that. Trauma is poison. When it seizes you, it changes you. You can ignore it, but it stays forever and it takes advantage of that to eat you alive until it brings you to your lowest point. Even if someone uses that to bring you to rock bottom, you can’t forget about how they made you feel, that you feel valued to a twisted extent, and you get increasingly drawn to the idea. Donny’s behaviour is irrational and flawed, but Gadd acknowledges that. Through his art, Gadd admits to the horrors of his experiences and his wrongdoings, allowing himself to be at his most vulnerable and honest. He makes no apologies for how he depicts himself and he shouldn’t have to.
And when you get to Donny’s backstory in episode four, Baby Reindeer takes a harrowing turn. Its narrative is so relentlessly brutal, sickening and traumatising to experience that I had to take a break from binge-watching. I wished I never saw that turn, but that doesn’t change that it did happen to Gadd. And it makes me worry for his well-being, given how he essentially re-enacts his repeated rapes, but there are no compromises, with Gadd refusing to shy away from the sexual confusion, shame and guilt he felt. From there, Baby Reindeer’s breakdown of the binding relationship between the abuser and the victim expands to that of the enduring aftermath of sexual assault, trauma, grooming, attachment disorder and self-hatred.
Gadd’s willingness to unpack his psychological self-destruction and how he squanders his relationships makes Baby Reindeer a brave piece of autofiction. Even when he explores Donny’s complications, he also doesn’t shy away from the factors influencing him and how he bottles up his feelings. His manager and his co-workers are hidden misogynists making light of Donny’s situation and believing Martha’s just a harmless regular. He doesn’t have the support needed to advance his career. The important people in Donny’s life distance themselves from him (albeit to a justifiable extent) as his situation with Martha escalates. And when he finally goes to the police, he’s asked why he took so long to report it.
Yet they serve as brutal reminders that Donny isn’t a perfect victim and the stigma that follows him. When survivors of abuse finally open up about their stories, they will not always remember all the details, whether they matter or not. The mental and physical violence committed against them always falls back on the abuser. But if a detail or an action sounds questionable, it’s the one thing that the people dwell on when they’re hearing, and they’re ultimately failing to listen. And when those details become the prominent focus rather than the genuine pain of the survivor, it’s what creates the shame. That’s how survivors hide their stories and why they become reluctant to seek out help.
In particular, male victims of stalking aren’t taken as seriously as female victims by society. One example becomes clear-cut when Donny tries telling one of the police officers. When he’s being told there isn’t enough evidence for his case, Donny points out what if he was a woman being stalked by a violent man. Wouldn’t the police be more active? But he hears the answer that they’re more likely to respond because the threat is more physical. Aren’t women also capable of hitting men, too? Should such a double standard be held up? Baby Reindeer subtly, and scathingly, brings up these questions by exploring the failures of the legal system to protect survivors of abuse and stalking. Even if the police are trying to do their job “the correct way,” that means enduring more months of mental abuse, torment and living in fear.
The truth is that there is no perfect victim and no perfect survivor. Trauma will shape us, regardless of how we hide that in our personas, and there is no way of escaping it. Some of us can adjust well, but some of us simply can’t. How we respond to our personal demons is up to us, but it’s also what can lead us to harm others and ruin lives. Whoever we meet, we won’t have clear ideas of what they’re going through, an idea cleverly framed through Donny’s perspective. We don’t understand him until we find out. Does his backstory excuse his behaviour? No. But we understand why he acts out, and yet one of Baby Reindeer’s many tragedies is that the people around him really don’t, even as his situation becomes increasingly apparent.
Its genuinely emotional rawness exudes through Gadd’s reflexive performance, where you can sense Donny’s nervousness in his facial reactions and his interactions, and his repressed pain in his mannerisms. His unusual reactions to increasingly dangerous scenarios enable the dark humour to shine and the intentional awkwardness of his character’s painfully unfunny comedic acts enable us to feel relatable second-hand embarrassment for him. But there’s never a false note in Gadd’s performance, whose emotional complexity strikes a finely tuned balance between comedy and tragedy, ultimately culminating in a heartbreaking monologue at the end of episode six, where we truly see how much he’s been hurting and how he can’t contain the pain any longer. It’s utterly gut-wrenching material fully realised by the emotional catharsis it delivers.
But what makes up the twisted, terrifying core of Baby Reindeer is Jessica Gunning’s performance as Martha Scott. She is frighteningly reminiscent of Kathy Bates from Misery. The unpredictability of her acting is key to building tension, where you’re never sure what she’ll do next, depending on what she hears or says. Her tears may suddenly disappear underneath a huge smile. Maybe she’ll let out a distinct, high-pitched laugh that’ll have heads turning. Or that cheery smile can turn into a venomous, violent rage. But beyond her terrifying emotional outbursts, Baby Reindeer resists turning her into a caricature. It recognises that there is pain within her voice, emotions, behaviours, and actions, and while it never justifies her actions, it manages to find empathy for her, something that Gunning’s performance successfully achieved. Her emotional rawness encapsulates how Martha’s stalking stems from untreated mental illness and that she is in desperate need of help or intervention, but she won’t stop at anything with her obsession towards Donny. She knows how to evade the law. She’s gotten smart. That Baby Reindeer unveils her nuances results in a fascinatingly complex examination of the relationship between the abuser and the abused.
It is a deeply unpleasant, traumatic experience where, much like real life, there are no happy endings guaranteed. All that is left is the searing pain of memories that forever haunt, but by seeing that and relating it to one’s experiences, it results in an overwhelming catharsis. A bleakly funny miniseries on trauma, obsession, abuse and stalking, Baby Reindeer punishes but ultimately rewards viewers with the complexities of Gadd’s storytelling, operating purely on emotional truth and realised with a vibrant visual style to make for immersive viewing. Gadd tells his story not for himself, but for survivors suffering in silence and to let them know they are not alone.
Rating: ★★★★★
Baby Reindeer is currently streaming on Netflix.
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