I am done withoiiu...The Official Netflix Baby Reindeer Thread (with tons of spoilers - beware)

first of all, Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning both deserve every award, no?

second of all, jesus fucking christ, this show...

felt like it deserved its own thread. i can't remember the last time a show gave me so many different feelings and emotions. i know lots of movies and shows WISH that they were emotional rollercoasters, but this one truly delivered.

yeah i was wondering when ILX would get on this.

devastating. i went in expecting a comedy. finished watching it over a week ago and still thinking about it now.

remarkable work, and not least because it's based on the life of the guy who wrote and starred in it

As far as Gadd playing himself, it does make more sense when you know that he did a one-man show of Baby Reindeer. He obviously spent a lot of time going through it all as autobio theater and preparing as an actor. BUT STILL....it couldn't have been easy. Just the one-man show thing...what does that do to you to relive all that over and over? And he played all the characters in the live thing? I think it also probably helps that he's a comedian. The are used to learning set pieces of psychodrama/autobio.

and he's a trained actor...

he's also playing himself as a much younger person. which must have been weird.

this came out today. i don't know what to think about the moral implications. i do know that Stuart Heritage is a name i will not soon forget.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/apr/23/richard-gadd-baby-reindeer-netflix-fallout

and the more i think about what that article brings up: there are based-on-a-true-story true crime movies put out every day? and a lot of them change names. or even combine characters. and people don't give them a second thought. i did wonder if people would call him out for not naming the person who abused him - to prevent future crimes by that person - but then it dawned on me that the person who did that to him might be dead! who knows?

so it seems the that the real "Martha" (as identified by internet sleuths) has started posting some pretty dodgy/defamatory stuff about Gadd on her Facebook page

Show has definitely raised some troubling ethical questions. It seems particularly strange that Gadd has claimed in interviews that they changed so many details that the real person wouldn't recognise herself, but they really don't seem to changed anything about her at all

plenty of people have written about people who have harmed or abused them while those abusers were alive. it is a way to get some closure/peace for the trauma they inflicted. but it certainly can get messy and i wouldn't be surprised if she sued him and netflix and everybody involved. though it seems like he did the one-man show thing for quite some time without incident and i'm sure netflix had a ton of lawyers go through everything thoroughly. the next series can be about the defamation trial. the one thing in his favor is that if the show is accurate she was found guilty of crimes. she can't just say that she did nothing and is the victim.
what i like about the show - and part of me does kind of think he would have been better off just calling this series fiction based on events that happened to him instead of starting the whole thing with *THIS IS A TRUE STORY* - is ALL the different issues that it brings up within one story! so much is covered. failure. fear of failure. fear of intimacy...okay, lots of different fears. but also about power, gender, the past, abuse, trauma, bad comedy, depression, mania, obsession...i liked that he made sure to include how obsessed HE got with his obsessed stalker. all those messages that he listened to...oof. its a lot. the whole thing is a lot.