Baby Reindeer is the TV show of the year and moved me greatly. In case you’re unaware, it’s a Netflix show created by comedian Richard Gadd which is based on his real-life experiences of being stalked by a woman, a stranger to whom he gave a free cup of tea in the pub where he worked. She dubbed him her “baby reindeer” and it turned into a story of, as Gadd puts it: “41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, four fake Facebook accounts, 106 pages of letters, and one cup of tea.” The series starts off dark enough and very funny, with Gadd appalled by the woman, but also empathetic towards her and weirdly flattered by the attention. But what transpires in a later episode elevates it into something much more profound.
Looked at purely as a TV show that delves unflinchingly into survivors and stalking, this is an accomplished work. Yet the show has hit true phenomenon status over the past week or so and I was clearly far from the only viewer to have laughed and cried hard, and spent days haunted by it. It’s striking universal chords about the self-destruction that can be tied up in bad relationships.
