It’s a truth universally acknowledged that acts of kindness can change your life, but the most inconsequential of gestures not only changed Richard Gadd’s life but upended, de-railed and very nearly ruined it in its entirety too. Gadd, an award-winning comedian, writer and actor, has made headlines this week after his semi-autobiographical limited series, Baby Reindeer, made its way onto Netflix. In the three days after its release on April 11, it had been watched by more than 2.6 million viewers and has since been the streaming service’s consistent number one TV show in both the US and the UK.
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For the uninitiated, Baby Reindeer is the story of a stalker and their victim, but not as you’ve seen it before. It’s a tale that begins earnestly with a cup of tea and ends three years later after several breakdowns, 41,000 emails and hundreds of hours worth of voice messages. But your average stalking story this is not; if there’s one thing that Gadd’s creation manages to do with aplomb it’s show the horror of stalking in its entirety. Over seven episodes, Gadd traverses the nuances of victimhood without falling into the trap made by other filmmakers of depicting stalking through a somewhat romantic, Shakespearean lens.
This isn’t the first time the small screen has played host to fictional stalkers and their victims. Netflix’s You, which debuted on the platform in 2018, tells the story of Joe Goldberg, played by Gossip Girl's Penn Badgley, a murderous stalker who, over the course of the show’s five seasons follows, harasses, tortures and kills his female victims. Of course, Badgley needs no introduction as an object of desire: at the peak of his Gossip Girl fame, he was voted People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive. Despite his actions in the series, by virtue of his undeniable charisma, Goldberg is framed him as an object of desire, somebody to be lusted after despite his predatory behaviour. Even Badgley himself has responded to fans’ tweets expressing their adoration of the fictional stalker.
There are other references that have painted stalking through a similarly glossy lens. In the sophomoric season of Stranger Things, Jonathan Byers, played by Charlie Heaton, creeps outside Nancy Wheeler, played by Natalia Dyer’s house and takes photographs of her without her consent. In The End Of The F*cking World, James, played by Alex Lawther, follows Alyssa, played by Jessica Barden, in order to 'protect' her. When does a fictional misplaced act of devotion graduate into something entirely more sinister? And at what point is it a filmmaker's duty to depict the illegality of stalking in all of its gritty reality? Obviously the goal of these shows is to entertain, but given that, according to the Office of National Statistics, approximately 8 million people in the UK were stalked between 2022 to 2023, isn't there a duty to show stalking in its entirety? At the hands of somebody who may well be handsome, but is more likely to be somebody who is as disturbed as their actions?
It goes without saying that there is no archetypal stalker, the same way that there is no archetypal victim, but in rejecting the potential on-screen romanticisation of his stalker, Gadd enabled audiences to experience the trauma of his stalking ordeal as it really was. His stalker was a victim herself, somebody who was as traumatised as those who she tormented. She didn't fit the prescriptive boxes that society prescribes those who commit crimes that we deem to be forgivable. Played with startling alacrity by actor Jessica Gunning, the depiction of Martha, the stalker in Baby Reindeer, shows that stalkers aren't always handsome, chiseled men with legions of women lusting after them.
Baby Reindeer is the emotional sucker punch that it is because the story isn't romanticised, it's not a cat-and-mouse, will-they-won't-they, story of obsessive love; it's a raw and very real retelling of a traumatic incident that changed the course of people's lives. After all, stalking is a crime, not the extension of a romantic obsession, something that TV and film would do well to remember.
If you or someone you know is currently being stalked, or fear that they might be, please call the National Stalking Helpline on 0808 802 0300.
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Naomi May is a freelance writer and editor with an emphasis on popular culture, lifestyle and politics. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard as its Fashion and Beauty Writer, working across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Acting News Editor at ELLE UK and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others.
