Trigger Warning: mentions of sexual abuse, grooming, and stalking.
A NEW Netflix miniseries comes up with a bang, creating a hype amongst watchers.
Premiered last April 11, the 7-episode miniseries follows the story of a struggling comedian Richard Gadd in his twenties. The show is based on Gadd’s real life experience of being sexually assaulted and stalked in the earlier times of his career.
Netflix had taken a its title from Gadd’s debut theater that premiered as part of Edinburgh Fringe festival in 2019.
The show was written and starred by Richard Gadd himself, taking inspiration from the worst period of his life.
Upon its air, the show has received a positive feedbacks being named by The New York Times as “mesmerizing, complex drama” and being labeled by Variety as “shocking, hilarious, painful, and devastating.”
Adding to this was the verdict by Horror master Stephen King praising the show on his official X account.
Netizens had also came to X (formerly Twitter) to express their thoughts and reaction to the drama miniseries.
“Martha” speaks out following the shows sucess
Being premiered just two weeks ago, the success of Netflix’s Baby Reindeer had accumulated a lot of positive feedbacks from the people who had watched the show.
Following the series success, the woman who claimed was inspired by Martha came forward and told the Daily Mail that she is considering on taking legal action against Richard Gadd’s project.
Martha was introduced in the show as the lonely woman who Donny Dunn encounter during his time as a struggling comedian.
During their encounter, Donny offered Martha a free cup of tea which later spiralled with Martha being Donny’s stalker—with her sending him 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 100 pages of later, and 350 hours of voicemails over the course of multiple years.
Speaking with the tabloid, the woman claimed that Gadd is actually the one who was obsessed with her, stating on how he is now using Baby Reindeer to stalk her now.
“I’m the victim. He’s written a bloody show about me.” she said.
She also added on how the show had amounted to bullying “bullying an older woman on television for fame and fortune.” And that even if Gadd tries to put an effort to hide her identity, it didn’t stop his supporters to send her death threats.
Sexual violence within the queer community
Following the story of Gadd, a scene on where he was taken under the wing of media veteran Darrien at the Edinburgh fringe—he was lured by the promise of mentorship and industry connections.
During Donny’s time with Darrien, Donny was repeatedly sexually assaulted by his supposed mentor, often while barely concious.
The story later follows of Donny enduring the confusion of ideas of masculinity, coercion, stigma, and drug use.
In article published by The Guardian, writer Jeffrey Ingold talked about on how reading the scene from the original script made him knew that the show “would strike a painful chord with many gay and bi men.”
According to Ingold, Baby Reindeer’s depiction of grooming and rape was is therefore as significant as it is unflinching while pointing out on how few TV shows explores the traumatic impact of sexual assault on gay and bi men.
From a 2021 data of SurvivorUK, it is revealed that 45% of gay and bi men have experienced sexual assault. Meanwhile, a more recent research from Glasglow Caledonian University revealed that one out of four have experienced some form of violent within same-sex relationship.
After Baby Reindeer
As the mini-series had receive a lot of attention from a lot of people, it didn’t stop a lot of fans to demand for a second season.
However, since the show was intended to be conceptualized as a limited series–Baby Reindeer was only intended to have one season.
