This article was published on 4/14 and republished on 4/15.
While the reality series Unlocked: A Jail Experiment is on top of the Netflix chart for the moment, there’s a new show out that appears to be worth your time, if you like tough-to-watch psychological dramas.
Baby Reindeer, an oddly named British series, debuted at No. 3 but — more impressively — has earned a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, a score you don’t often seen for Netflix originals. There are not that many reviews in yet, but the Rotten Tomatoes response so far is impressive, and early audience scores are similarly high.
Baby Reindeer is based on a play, which is based on the real experiences of creator Richard Gadd having to do with a female stalker who showed up at his house and sent him thousands of messages. Here’s what he said about the situation in his life:
“When a man gets stalked it can be portrayed in films and television as a sexy thing. Like a femme fatale who gradually becomes more sinister. It doesn’t carry as much threat of physical violence, is less common and can be trivialised. I was physically scared because I didn’t know how far she could take it, she could have a knife, but I did think how terrifying it would be if she was a tall scary man.”
I suppose this may be something of a spoiler for the series, but if you want to hear how the real-life situation was resolved: The woman received nine months in prison and a five-year restraining order.
You can watch a trailer for Baby Reindeer below:
This is a miniseries, not something that’s going to be itching to get a season two, given the nature of the story. It’s only seven episodes long, with most of them just over 30 minutes, so three-and-a-half to four hours total to get through it all.
I’m certainly going to give it a watch given these reviews and how compelling the story seems to be. I am curious to see if it will make its way to No. 1 on Netflix, as you hope audiences would reward quality. But given its subject matter, I would not be shocked if it didn’t. We’ll see.
Update (4/15): Given the high praised for Baby Reindeer here, I sat down and watched the entire series yesterday so I could get a handle on what critics were seeing in it.
Yes, it’s really powerful. No, I cannot recommend it for everyone due to A) how generally unsettling it is and B) some severe sequences of sexual violence in one episode in particular, even if there are warnings beforehand.
It’s a much more complex series than I thought it would be, as you might imagine it’s just something of a horror story as a man is stalked by a woman who won’t stop attempting to ruin his life. It is that, but it’s much more involved due to the excellent examination of Donny Dunn himself, his insecurities, his trauma and his own psychology in relation to the situation, realizing truths about himself.
This is of course because this is a true story being conveyed by the man it actually happened to, something you do not see with fictional offerings or adaptions of someone else’s trauma. This unique set-up makes for a compelling drama on a level I was genuinely not expecting, and if you can handle it, yes, it’s worth watching.
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