Created by Scottish comic Richard Gadd, and based on the true story of his stalking ordeal, the Netflix series is an extreme form of therapy – and 2024’s most harrowing TV show.
When the trailer for new Netflix series Baby Reindeer dropped at the beginning of April, it looked like it would be your average dramedy; a blithe story of a comedian with an annoying stalker who emails him things like: “I jusst[sic] had an egg.”
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Baby Reindeer throughout, as well as references to sexual assault
And therein lay the first masterstroke of Scottish comic Richard Gadd – the writer, producer and star of Baby Reindeer. With the audience subconsciously primed to expect one thing, when people actually saw the show, it winded them like a gut-punch.
“Clicked on this last night, not knowing anything about it,” one person commented under the trailer on YouTube. “It’s brutal, unsettling and disturbing and probably one of the best shows Netflix has produced in a long time.” Another person commented: “Same… Initially, I categorised it as a possible dark British comedy, relegating it to background noise… yet it emerged as a journey through a spectrum of emotions.” After its release on 11 April, it quickly hit number one on Netflix’s most-watched charts in the US and the UK with 10.4 million hours watched at the time of writing.
Given there wasn’t very much publicity for the series beforehand, many viewers would have been coming to the story for the first time, not aware that the seven-part series is in fact autobiographical and based on true events in Gadd’s life, which he first turned into a one-man comedy theatre show of the same name in 2019.
