It seems you can’t turn a corner at the moment, whether online or in your social circles, without someone mentioning Netflix’s new hit Baby Reindeer, a psychological thriller-cum-dark comedy about a man and his stalker. The show, which chronicles the ‘true’ story of protagonist Donny Dunn (Richard Gadd), a failing comedian who is being stalked by former lawyer and mentally ill Martha (Jessica Gunning), was originally a play performed by comedian Gadd at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It is introspective to Gadd’s tribulations as a victim to a fault.
That fault being where does his artistic licence start and where does it end when it comes to using the actions of a mentally ill person as a framework for processing his own trauma through art that is designed to be entertainment. This is the moral complication to art, and especially art as emotionally raw as Baby Reindeer appearing on Netflix, arguably the biggest streaming platform of entertainment on the planet. It’s a topic much debated, especially on authenticity and the necessity of accuracy when creating biopics, but Baby Reindeer permeates an intriguing line on unreliable authorship and introspective art.
This feature was first posted on April 27th 2024. Full feature linked below.
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