It starts out as a joke. A strange woman, a free cup of tea, a slightly too long conversation. But Baby Reindeer is no joke -- it's an emotional thunderclap disguised as standup. An autobiographical, skinless and uncomfortably dense series in which Donny Dunn (played by the creator himself, Richard Gadd) doesn't just open the door to his life, but rips it off its hinges. It's Netflix when they dare -- and you watch it with your 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 repeatedly pause the episode, not because it's boring, but because it's too much. Baby Reindeer is such one. Not in that artful Lars von Trier way, where everything has to hurt to be real, but because it's actually true. Or at least close enough that you can feel it in your own luggage.
Donny is a comedian in London. Someone who struggles to punch through but struggles even more with himself. When he offers a strange woman — Martha — a cup of tea at the bar one day, it becomes the beginning of a nightmare. She stalks him. Ringing. Mailer. Showing up. But the whole thing is more nuanced than “psycho woman vs poor man”. It's a sticky morass of codependency, boundaries, shame and repressed trauma.
Gadd plays the part himself, and that is precisely what makes it unbearably good. There is an almost masochistic honesty to his performance. He passes himself off, not as the hero, but as an accomplice. There are scenes that make you curl your toes -- not because they're embarrassing, but because you recognize the feeling of doing something you know you'll regret, even while it's happening.
The series balances insanely skillfully between dark humor and deep seriousness. You laugh -- and feel bad about it. You empathize with Donny -- and doubt him. And you look a little too long at yourself in the mirror afterwards.
Visually, the series is kept in a cool, almost sickly palette. London is grey, wet, cold -- but not anonymous. The camera is often completely close, as if trying to wade into Donny's head. It succeeds. It's like standing in a room without oxygen where someone insists on telling you something you don't want to hear.
And the worst? This is real. It's all based on Gadd's own experiences. It gives the series a heaviness that makes you not just switch off and move on. You take it with you. It sits in the body. Kind of like a bruise you don't remember how you got -- but which hurts anyway.
Reflection:
Baby Reindeer is not a series you recommend to everyone. It's too confrontational, too skinless. But it is also important. A small, dirty, brilliant reminder that molestation doesn't always look the way we think -- and that trauma rarely goes away just because we're funny.
