Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Baby Reindeer’ On Netflix, Where A Struggling Comedian Deals With A Very Crafty Stalker

We’re at the point during the binge-TV era where people binge shows as a matter of course; the episodes are there, so why not knock a bunch out in one sitting? We’ve forgotten what it was like to be so intrigued or excited by the end of one episode, we would immediately hit “Next Episode” without even thinking about it. A new dark dramedy from England has reminded us of that feeling we had when the streaming era began.

BABY REINDEER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man sheepishly walks into a police station and asks if he can report someone stalking him.

The Gist: When Donny Dunn (Richard Gadd) tells the desk officer that she’s been stalking him for six months, the officer asks him why it took him so long to report it.

We go back those six months, when the struggling comedian was working as a bartender in a London pub. A woman walks in, sits down and starts crying. After she tells him that she can’t afford even a cup of tea, he gives her a tea on the house. That act of kindness brightens her mood; Martha (Jessica Gunning) introduces herself and immediately starts chattering about her job as a lawyer and all of the high-powered people she knows. She even shows him the names of people like David Cameron and Tony Blair on her very old dumbphone.

Martha then starts coming around to the pub every day, ordering a Diet Coke and never drinking it. She just talks to Donny as the crowd buzzes around her. Despite her obvious loneliness and penchant for lying, he pitied her and was intrigued by her at the same time. Her talk starts getting sexual, so when she says he could come by her new flat and “hang her curtains” it’s not about window treatments.

She also somehow got a hold of his email address — he’s a struggling comedian, and it was on his website — and sends him dozens of poorly-typed emails a day. For some reason, they say “Sent from my iPhone” at the bottom, even though she clearly doesn’t have one. The words she does spell correctly seem to be complex ones, like “cunnilingus.” In many of the emails, she calls him “baby reindeer”, for some reason or another.

Donny tries to let Martha down over a cup of coffee, but instead he sees the first evidence that she’s not well. He decides to follow her home and sees that she lives in a filthy flat in public housing. When she types him an email on her laptop and his phone dings, she knows he followed her.

Martha shows up at Donny’s stand-up gig, where his prop comedy is bombing. But her audience participation allows him to riff and get laughs. Still, things are getting a bit too close. At the same time, though, he sees her humanity and her vulnerability.

But when he sees a friend request from “Martha Scott”, then searches for “Martha Scott lawyer,” he learns the ugly truth about her. But that doesn’t mean his decision making involving Martha is any better.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Baby Reindeer reminds us of Lover, Stalker, Killer, a recent Netflix documentary. And even though this is scripted, it’s based on a true story (see below).

Our Take: Gadd, who plays Donny, created and wrote the series based on his own experience. Yes, he had a stalker in real life, one that haunted him for years, and he made that experience into a one-man play, which is the basis for the series. Gadd manages to infuse what’s inherently an extremely dark story with some big laughs, albeit laughs that are about as black as black comedy can get. But what he also manages to achieve is to give Donny and Martha enough nuances to not just make this a flat, Fatal Attraction-style tale of a seemingly “good guy” and his crazy female stalker.

Donny has plenty of his own flaws and perpetrates his own lies; in the second episode we’re introduced to Teri (Nava Mau), a gorgeous American therapist he was introduced to via a trans dating app. However, Donny changed his name and occupation on the app because, while he wants to date trans women, he doesn’t want to be found out. So they go to the same dark bar full of finance types for their dates. Those lies come in handy, though, when the topic of Martha arises. He also has an unusual relationship with his ex-girlfriend’s mother, which will come into play as Martha further infiltrates Donny’s life.

As for Martha, Gunning manages to make her vulnerable and approachable, even though we know that she’s got a screw loose. Even after we know about her history, which includes jail time, there’s still a warmth to her smile and a desperation in her eyes that Donny seems to connect to, even as she’s making his life hell. And this is despite the fact that Gunning’s face is covered in makeup that gives her wrinkled problem skin; her vulnerability still comes through the attempts to make her look psychopathic.

The darkly comedic elements, like the misspelled emails and Donny’s sardonic attempts to play off what Martha is doing, start to fall away as Martha takes a turn towards her more psychotic tendencies. But there’s still a lot of layers and humanity there, even after things come to a violent head. That comes midway through the season, so there’s plenty of opportunity for the comedic stuff to come back as Donny’s fortunes improve while the specter of Martha still simmers in the background.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: As “Happy Together” plays, Donny accepts Martha’s friend request, despite everything he knows about her. “I have a convicted stalker stalking me,” we hear his voice saying over and over, but he clicks “accept” anyway.

Sleeper Star: Nava Mau’s Teri is probably the strongest character in the series, although she seems to have a thing for Donny despite all of the crappy stuff he’s done as their relationship is established.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we can find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Baby Reindeer is a very bingeable show because it’s funny while being incredibly dark, and it doesn’t take the easy way out when it comes to its characters. So, while we cringed every time Martha further wheedled her way into Donny’s life, we also wanted to know what would happen next. That’s not something we’ve said about a lot of shows lately.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.