MIDNIGHT REVIEWS Baby Reindeer Episodes 1–4
Midnight Reviews features reviews and thought pieces written and edited by a parent, at night, after bedtime.
Baby Reindeer Episodes 1–4
Series created by: Richard Gadd
Featuring: Richard Gadd, Jessica Gunning, Nava Mau
Synopsis: Donny Dunn (Gadd) is a barman in London, with hopes of a stand-up comedy career. Unfortunately, he’s (mostly) terrible. Martha Scott (Gunning) walks into the pub one day and, for some reason, Donny takes pity on her. What starts out as helping a lost puppy turns into Martha stalking Donny.
Review: Baby Reindeer’s pitch threatens to sound like an out-and-out comedy. “Donny’s a struggling stand-up comedian who gets stalked by this crazy person! It’s mad!” It is, however, a tale of lust, of broken promises and above all else a tale of a person having control taken away from them. It is not, as they say, an easy watch.
Despite Netflix dropping every episode all at once, it is not binge-worthy. Take your time with it or risk being dragged into a spiral of horror and unrelenting emptiness.
Donny is indeed a struggling stand-up who gets stalked by Martha, a woman with a murky, violent-sounding past. As things move on, Martha turns up outside his home, chases him through the night and somehow thinks the two of them are in a genuine, loving relationship. All the while Donny is trying to keep his relationship with Teri (Mau) a secret not just from Martha, but from the entire world due to misplaced shame and guilt.
Each episode starts off with some typing on the screen. Words get spelled out before quickly being deleted. This is something that appears frequently throughout when also showing Martha’s bizarre messages to Donny, but it’s use in the opening titles is interesting. The reason for this becomes clear once the first couple of episodes are finished: This is Donny trying to get something out, before trying to take it back. He simultaneously wants to release his horrible secret, but feels he can’t.
There are darkly comic moments throughout courtesy of Donny (Gadd, here reprising the role of himself that he took to the stage in a well-received one-man show). This could’ve been the tale of a sad sack who gets stalked and has horrendous things happen to him that beat him down even more, but Gadd injects enough humour and humanity to ensure this isn’t the case. Whether playing this role again is a form of therapy or simply his way of telling his story again is unclear.
Fraught and tragic.
Despite being written and featuring the person these events happened to, the show does not frame Donny as the perfect person. It would be tempting, especially with what comes later, to write this story as a bland, one-dimensional tale of woe where no matter what Donny does, even when he’s amazing, bad things happen to him. Baby Reindeer features Donny making terrible choices (sneaking outside Martha’s home late at night, continuing their relationship even when he realises something isn’t right). But you can understand every decision Donny makes even if as a viewer merely observing, you beg him to choose a different path.
Gunning is highly effective as Martha. When she first shows up Martha is a kooky, needy person, who later inadvertently reveals that perhaps something isn’t quite right. But she sees through Donny’s mask and can tell something has happened, even if he doesn’t want to share it with anyone. When she doesn’t get what she wants she lets out the venomous hatred inside. From the first few episodes, I was left wondering if she actually meant the things she said, or if she was simply lashing out at anything and everyone in the most efficient way. Once she’s sat at a bus stop, you empathise with her. Gunning gives a very well-balanced, calibrated performance that makes sure Martha doesn’t turn into a caricature.
It is a show about Donny’s life, with Martha taking precedence in most episodes, but it’s a shame we don’t see more of Nava Mau as Teri. She plays such an integral part not just in Donny’s life but as a part of the show to ratchet up tension in a way that feels genuine as opposed to mechanical. Mau is given the chance to show facets of Teri’s life, but there’s never the sense that we’ll get shown the full picture. However, we can’t have it both ways and this would probably make the show feel bloated.
It’s only obvious where this is going once it’s too late.
And then there’s episode four.
It is a very different beast to what came before, but a similar path appears in front of Donny as he makes the wrong choices whilst we as viewers understand why he’s making them and beg him to stop.
Episode four is a pivot, a tool to reframe lots of what came before. Conversations, or even individual pauses, take on a whole new meaning once you realise what came before. On the surface, episode four is a highly economical flashback episode. The entire thing feels like a dream while the previous episodes feel like Donny trying to wake up. This episode is montage-heavy and doesn’t spend too long in any one place save for the home of TV writer Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill), a man who has promised Donny the world. It’s only obvious where this is going once it’s too late.
Some of the dialogue from Darrien has this horrific double meaning and, like how we replay moments from the first three episodes in our mind, even his first conversations take on a whole new meaning when you realise what this monster’s up to. Darrien’s home starts off as, yes, a place where dreams are made before turning into a shut-off nest of terrible, craven appetites. The episode is not a how-to guide for those who have suffered abuse. It is an account of abuse, showing what could happen to anyone who accidentally, innocently goes with the wrong flow and how we so easily bottle up trauma.
Baby Reindeer is fraught and tragic, and tells the age-old story of how when everything goes wrong, it is invariably the blameless who are left to pick up the pieces, trying to hold together what they can whilst feeling not a shred of hope or, at times, anything. A punishing but rewarding series.
Baby Reindeer is available to stream on Netflix.
Matthew D. Smith likes to overshare his views on movies and TV shows whenever and wherever he can. Indulge him, and follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Smith_M_D
