It begins like a joke. An odd woman, a free cup of tea, a conversation that goes on a little too long. But Baby Reindeer is no joke — it’s an emotional thunderclap dressed up as stand-up. A autobiographical, raw, and uncomfortably intimate series in which Donny Dunn (played by creator Richard Gadd himself) doesn’t just open the door to his life, he tears it off its hinges. This is Netflix when it dares — and you watch it with your whole body.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
You know the kind of series where you pause the episode several times, not because it’s boring, but because it’s too much. Baby Reindeer is one of those. Not in the artfully cruel Lars von Trier way, where everything has to hurt to count as real, but because it actually is true. Or at least close enough that you can feel it in your own baggage.
Donny is a comedian in London. One who’s trying to break through, but is struggling even more with himself. When he one day offers a stranger — Martha — a cup of tea at the bar, it becomes the beginning of a nightmare. She stalks him. Calls him. Emails him. Shows up. But the whole thing is more nuanced than “psycho woman vs. poor man.” It’s a sticky swamp of codependency, boundaries, shame, and buried trauma.
Gadd plays the role himself, and that is precisely what makes it so unbearably good. There’s an almost masochistic honesty in his performance. He exposes himself, not as the hero, but as complicit. There are scenes that make you squirm — not because they’re embarrassing, but because you recognize the feeling of doing something you know you’ll regret, even as you’re doing it.
The series balances dark humor and deep seriousness with insane skill. You laugh — and feel bad about it. You feel for Donny — and doubt him. And afterwards, you spend a little too long looking at yourself in the mirror.
Visually, the series is kept in a cool, almost sickly palette. London is gray, wet, cold — but not anonymous. The camera is often right up close, as if it’s trying to force its way into Donny’s head. It succeeds. It feels like standing in a room without oxygen, where someone insists on telling you something you don’t want to hear.
And the worst part? It’s real. The whole thing is based on Gadd’s own experiences. That gives the series a weight that means you don’t just switch it off and move on. You carry it with you. It stays in the body. A bit like a bruise you can’t remember getting — but that still hurts anyway.
Reflection:
Baby Reindeer is not a series you recommend to everyone. It’s too confrontational, too raw. But it’s also important. A small, dirty, brilliant reminder that abuse doesn’t always look the way we think it does — and that trauma rarely disappears just because we’re funny.
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