Another month, another Netflix series enrapturing audiences and becoming the talk of the web. April’s, it seems, goes to Baby Reindeer, a miniseries based on actual events experienced by creator Richard Gadd. As names have been changed, it’s really no surprise that amateur sleuths are trying to figure out the true identity of some of the key characters. But Gadd would really like viewers to redirect their focus, telling them they are only missing out on the point of Baby Reindeer.
Richard Gadd took to social media (via BBC) to request one thing to Baby Reindeer viewers: “Please don’t speculate on who any of the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show. Lots of love, Richard.”
One of Gadd’s primary goals with Baby Reindeer was to address stalking and abuse in a way that few shows have. As per Netflix, “Stalking on television tends to be very sexed-up. It has a mystique. It’s somebody in a dark alley way. It’s somebody who’s really sexy, who’s very normal, but then they go strange bit by bit. But stalking is a mental illness. I really wanted to show the layers of stalking with a human quality I hadn’t seen on television before. It’s a stalker story turned on its head. It takes a trope and turns it on its head.”
The two Baby Reindeer characters that fans have zeroed in on trying to figure out the identities of are stalker Martha Scott (Jessica Gunning) and TV writer Darrien O’Connor (Tom Goodman-Hill), who grooms and rapes the lead character, Donny Dunn, who is both played by and based on Gadd himself.
Here is a partial synopsis: “The story of Baby Reindeer centers on struggling comedian Donny Dunn’s (Gadd) strange and layered relationship with a woman named Martha (Jessica Gunning), whose initially friendly demeanor unravels as she begins to stalk Donny relentlessly…Their first interaction is innocent enough: While working his shift as a bartender, Donny shows an act of kindness to Martha, a customer whose vulnerability is readily apparent. But, as the saying goes, “no good deed goes unpunished,” and this casual encounter sparks a suffocating obsession that threatens to wreck both their lives and forces Donny to face his deeply buried trauma.”
Baby Reindeer is doing quite well on Netflix, having topped the English TV chart with more than 13 million viewers.
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