Netflix's Baby Reindeer dares you not to look away

Netflix’s Baby Reindeer is full of turbulence. Series creator and comedian Richard Gadd lifts from his real-life experience with a stalker to write seven jaw-dropping episodes that are tough to digest. They’re emotionally devastating and cause physical discomfort but deliver a profoundly human story that’s impossible to shake off long after the final credits roll. It’s no wonder Baby Reindeer has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon since its relatively quiet April 11 debut, jumping to the global top spot on Netflix’s viewing charts within days.

Its success has pushed the Scottish actor into the limelight in the same way I May Destroy You rightfully did to Michaela Coel. Gadd’s work is tonally similar to HBO’s IMDY—both tackle heavy topics of sexual assault, trauma, and recovery with an empathetic, well-rounded lens. Baby Reindeer’s rawness is gobsmacking. It forced me to watch the show with my jaw on the floor as it perceptively analyzed its troubled characters and situations—and challenged its audience to do the same.

In the show, struggling stand-up comic and bartender Donny Dunn (Gadd) feels sorry for a weepy customer, Martha (Jessica Gunning), and gives her a free drink. Shocked by this kind gesture, she grows dangerously obsessed with him. She becomes a regular fixture at the bar, hoping to woo him with makeovers and fabricated stories of her busy life as a lawyer. Martha’s undivided attention feeds into his deflating ego, so Donny doesn’t take the lies and red flags seriously—until it’s too late.

Donny is the tortured sufferer who makes questionable choices out of naiveté, like accepting her Facebook friend request despite knowing she’s a convicted stalker. Meanwhile, Martha is the lunatic and enraged criminal who, unable to face rejection, escalates her actions. She comments on his old photos, disrupts his stand-up acts, tricks his landlady, sends him endless grammatically fucked-up emails, and threatens his current girlfriend, ex-partner, and parents.

The emails range from being sexually explicit to surprisingly heartfelt to extremely scary, always ending with “sent from my iPhone” even though she has a cheap flip phone. Martha uses this one-sided form of communication to stay in touch with him constantly and conjure an entire relationship. In reality, Gadd received 41,071 emails from his stalker over four years, so he only scratches the surface in his scripts here. And that’s still enough to crystallize his nightmare. However, rather than depict a simple stalker/victim dichotomy, Baby Reindeer instead paints Donny and Martha’s relationship (for lack of a better word) with shades of gray.

In its heartbreaking fourth episode, Baby Reindeer goes back five years to when Donny moved from Edinburgh to London on the advice of a potential mentor, Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill). Serious trigger warning for the installment: It unnervingly explores Darrien grooming and raping Donny, becoming something like a crushing horror film that helps explain Donny’s current self-destructive tendencies, of which there are plenty.

One of those leads to Donny sabotaging his relationship with Teri (Nava Mau), a trans therapist. Another results in Donny delaying going to the cops about Martha. It’s a big question that plagues you while watching Baby Reindeer, especially since the premiere opens with him at a police station. So why does it take him six months to get there? Well, he’s racked with shame and guilt over never reporting Darrien all those years ago. Plus, being assaulted is what made him confront his bisexuality, and he still hasn’t fully processed it yet.

Donny is also genuinely concerned about Martha’s mental health. She doesn’t get a heartfelt episode dedicated to her psyche, but Gunning’s breathtaking performance fleshes it out anyway. Gunning leaves you gasping with fear yet invokes a disconcerting sensitivity to Martha’s plight. It makes us question why she didn’t get the help she needed, and who she could’ve turned to and asked for it. So against all odds, why are we feeling bad for Martha, who is completely in the wrong here?

Baby Reindeer isn’t defending her. But it is demanding we dig deeper into why we unassumingly judge people at first sight. Donny does it, too, when he looks at Martha, as he says in his narration. He felt immediate pity because of how she looked—lonely, frumpy, sad—when she first walked into the bar. It’s why he gave her Diet Coke and invited a years-long ordeal into his life. He could’ve avoided it, but Gadd’s reflections aren’t about that particular what-if. Instead, he bravely revisits a tragedy and dares us not to look away. And in the process, Baby Reindeer ends up not just subverting expectations but shattering them.