Intense and uncomfortable Baby Reindeer may be, the deluge of social buzz and fallout from its release is hard to witness. There is a harsh line between interest and obsession and now the water cooler moments of days in the office have been transferred online. In turn, the echo chamber has formed at breakneck speeds, providing ample cover for eerie speculation on who this or that character is. Wild allegations thrown around after Baby Reindeer, the Richard Gadd-penned miniseries put out by Netflix, has overtaken the sickly horrors presented by Martha (Jessica Gunning) and the parasocial relationships highlighted by her and Donny (Gadd). Our desire to know detail paired with the elusive tone of a show trying to protect identities has underestimated internet sleuths and as such spiralled not because of its quality but because of its three-piece jigsaw profile.
As solid a viewing Baby Reindeer is (you can knock it out in a long evening if stocked up on meal-prepped pasta dishes and honey roast nuts), it is hard to escape the vacuum which now dominates its social media presence. Law-breaking speculation on who Darrien O’Connor (Tom Goodman-Hill) is meant to represent or the hunting down of the real-life Teri (Nava Mau) exposes the reality of opening deeply personal moments in your life to strangers across the globe. Gadd has expressed a terrifying time, an upbringing which has damaged his psyche. Baby Reindeer is well-performed by its major players and holds onto an intensity which can be fielded with or without the buzz now lingering on its online presence. Sharp writing and a lived-in experience for Gadd, navigating those personal blows, is enough of a draw for many.
But the media landscape has changed and our desire to know everything, even when it is not our business, has overtaken common sense. For all the excellent work from Gunning and Gadd, their back-and-forth has caused an accidental boom of interest in the lives of everyday people. Crimes exposed and detailed throughout Baby Reindeer are now the subject of speculation because it is all too easy to find yourself on Twitter trying to hunt down real people, regardless of whether there is public interest or not. We now have the tools to claim and blame without thinking whether the creator of the show has given us access. Are we to hold the Netflix crew responsible for the lacklustre care or the people now spotlighting and platforming the alleged, real Martha? Baby Reindeer has provided a post-release mess and as such the conversation has drifted away from what Gadd is comfortable sharing throughout this excellent seven-episode series to what we can find out through having nothing better to do on an evening than sift through social media.
This is the sort of marketing campaign and boom Netflix is consistent with. There is no doubt the speculation online has lit a fuse on the popularity of the miniseries and, at the very least, it means more eyes are on an interesting experience. We can now get to grips with exceptional performers like Mau and Goodman-Hill, in a well-narrated and documented piece from Gadd. Enlisting familiar faces like Nina Sosanya certainly helps the case for making Baby Reindeer an intense watch and even with its darker moments there is still a lighter element, the cringe-inducing Edinburgh Fringe scenes of Gadd performing in a pub are laid out well and provide some insight into Gadd as a person rather than an object of interest. Baby Reindeer toes the line between speculation and skilful storytelling though could have done better to control the media storm now circling and overshadowing its engaging true story.
