Baby Reindeer


Baby Reindeer is a British black comedy, drama and thriller television miniseries created by and starring Richard Gadd. It is adapted from his autobiographical one-man show. Directed by Weronika Tofilska and Josephine Bornebusch, it also stars Jessica Gunning, Nava Mau and Tom Goodman-Hill. It was released on 11 April 2024 on Netflix, where it had a strong viewership and was critically acclaimed.
Baby Reindeer won six Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, Outstanding Writing for Gadd, Outstanding Lead Actor for Gadd, and Outstanding Supporting Actress for Gunning. It also won two Golden Globe Awards: Best Limited or Anthology Series and Best Supporting Actress for Gunning.

Plot

An aspiring comedian named Donny Dunn works as a bartender at a pub in London. He offers a free cup of tea to a weeping customer, Martha, to cheer her up. Martha develops an attachment to Donny and begins to stalk him both in person and online. As Donny attempts to further his career in comedy, the stalking begins to affect every aspect of his life, forcing him to understand his own behaviour, confront his sexuality, and come to terms with the trauma of a past sexual assault. As he attempts to escape Martha's stalking, the mix of fear, sympathy and revulsion he feels for his stalker threatens to ruin his life.

Cast and characters

Main

  • Richard Gadd as Donny Dunn, an aspiring comedian who works as a bartender
  • Jessica Gunning as Martha Scott, a former lawyer with a criminal past
  • Nava Mau as Teresa "Teri", a transgender American therapist Donny meets on a dating website
  • Tom Goodman-Hill as Darrien O'Connor, a television writer

    Recurring

  • Nina Sosanya as Liz, Keeley's mother and Donny's landlady
  • Michael Wildman as Greggsy, owner of the pub Donny works in
  • Danny Kirrane as Gino, Donny's co-worker
  • Thomas Coombes as Officer Daniels, an incompetent police officer
  • Shalom Brune-Franklin as Keeley, Donny's ex-girlfriend

    Guest

  • Tom Durant Pritchard as Jason, host of a comedy competition
  • Laura Smyth as Glenda, master of ceremonies of the comedy competition
  • Will Hislop as Billy, a fellow comedian
  • Amanda Root as Elle Dunn, Donny's mother
  • Mark Lewis Jones as Gerry Dunn, Donny's father
  • Hugh Coles as Francis, Donny's friend from drama school
  • Josh Finan as Diggsy, a new employee at the pub
  • Alexandria Riley as Detective Culver, the detective assigned to Donny's case

    Episodes

All seven episodes were released simultaneously on Netflix on 11 April 2024.

Production

Development and casting

The series was announced in December 2020, with Richard Gadd set to write the series and star. Clerkenwell Films was set to produce. Weronika Tofilska was added as the director in August 2022, with Josephine Bornebusch announced as an additional director in March 2023. Gadd was cast alongside the series announcement. Jessica Gunning was cast on 26 August 2022. Nava Mau was announced as a cast member in March 2023.

Filming

Filming began in mid-August 2022 in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, and continued in London in September.
Among the filming locations in London were the Stag's Head pub in Hoxton, which was used for exterior scenes at the Heart pub, the Regent's Canal in Haggerston, and the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Donny's stand-up comedy shows were filmed at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, the Rivoli Ballroom in Brockley and The Comedy Store in Leicester Square. Darrien's flat was filmed inside Marsham Court in Victoria, London. In Edinburgh the Hoppy pub in Meadowbank served as the exterior of the Festival Fringe venue for Donny's comedy show. Other exterior locations are the Royal Mile and the Grassmarket, where Donny is shown walking along the street amid festival activities.
Filming wrapped by early March 2023.

Reception

Critical response

The series was critically acclaimed. On the online review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 99% of 68 critics gave the series a positive review, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "A bracing work of autofiction by creator and star Richard Gadd, Baby Reindeer can be a punishing watch but richly rewards viewers with its emotional complexity and excellent performances." On Metacritic the series holds a weighted average score of 88 out of 100 based on 18 critics.

Audience viewership

Baby Reindeer debuted at number five on Netflix's Top 10 TV English titles for the tracking week of 8–14 April 2024, with 10.4 million hours viewed. On the following week, it climbed to number one and garnered 52.8 million viewing hours. The series remained at the same position for its third and fourth weeks, earning 87.4 and 73.6 million viewing hours.

Accolades

Controversy

Fans began to speculate on social media about possible people who inspired the show's fictional characters. In April 2024 Gadd asked fans to cease speculating. After being falsely identified online as the factual person from whom the character Darrien was derived, the theatre director Sean Foley reported the false allegations to the police. The police investigated the reports. Gadd confirmed that Foley was not his source of the character.
On 9 May 2024, in an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored, 59-year-old Fiona Muir-Harvey, a Scottish woman with a law degree, claimed to have inspired the Martha character. Earlier tweets from a Twitter account linked to Muir-Harvey resulted in increased fan connections between her and the Martha character. These included a reference to hanging curtains, a sexually suggestive phrase that was later used in the script of Baby Reindeer.
During her Uncensored interview, Muir-Harvey said that she had met Gadd several times at The Hawley Arms, Camden, but denied sending him 41,000 emails or going to his home, as was stated of her erstwhile character on the show. She said that she was planning to start legal action for defamation against both Gadd and Netflix for claiming the series is "a true story" and suggesting that she had been convicted of stalking and sexual assault, as is the Martha character in the series.
Muir-Harvey said she had sent up to 10 emails and a letter, as well as several tweets, to Gadd. She later claimed she was paid £250 to appear, and said that the interview left her feeling "a bit used". The interview drew some criticism, with people questioning the ethics of the event.
Laura Wray, a lawyer and widow of the Scottish politician Jimmy Wray, said that she had briefly employed Muir-Harvey at her law firm in 1997. After Muir-Harvey was dismissed, she engaged in stalker-like behaviour towards Wray, forcing her to take out an injunction.
On 6 June 2024 Muir-Harvey filed a lawsuit against Netflix in the United States, alleging defamation, negligence, and gross negligence, seeking $170 million in damages and claiming that the show "viciously destroyed" her. Netflix responded that viewers were unlikely to associate the character with Muir-Harvey. On 27 September US judge R. Gary Klausner dismissed Muir-Harvey's negligence and gross negligence claims, along with her request for punitive damages, but allowed her to continue the defamation case against Netflix. Klausner noted that the series begins by stating that "this is a true story", differentiating it from Gadd's play, which was said to be "based on a true story". He said that Netflix failed to verify Gadd's claims as asserted in the script, and rejected Netflix's defence that the character could not be tied to Muir-Harvey, saying that "they have specific similarities few others could claim to share". A federal judge set a date for court proceedings to begin on 6 May 2025 at the Central District of California court, but this was halted by an appeal lodged by Netflix at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.