Baby Reindeer

MOVIE #1,923 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.23.24 Today on the site I’ll be doing an end-of-the-month catch-up on things I’ve watched separate from any current series. Every once in a while I’ll dip into some buzzy streaming show and Baby Reindeer certainly qualifies. This thing took off in a massive way, becoming #1 on Netflix for several weeks and snagging 11 Emmy nominations. Like a true crime serial, its salacious plot based on actual events (a recovering assault victim and aspiring standup comic who is grappling with his sexuality is stalked by a mentally unwell woman) is built to suck you in. Adding to this ‘appeal’ is the fact that the main character (Richard Gadd) IS the IRL guy this stuff happened to (he also created and wrote the series).

The show is well-made, but I have a difficult time connecting with this type of ultra-personal drama that seems to rely entirely on the simple fact that you have to see it to the finish solely out of a manufactured sense of curiosity (I MUST see how the ‘true story’ resolves itself!). On the one hand, the fact that someone is revealing SO much about themselves in this way is fascinating, but it also feels cheap. Packaging it in easily digestible bites (episodes run between ~25-45 minutes) with built-in cliffhangers — from my admittedly cynical vantage point — seems like a pandering move. That it caught fire, both in terms of viewership and critical praise, only confirms my suspicions. If this had been condensed into a 2.5-hour film, for example, I think it could have easily been lost in the dead sea of other Netflix-core movies of similar ilk. There’s just something about that “click next episode” button that hooks you in. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that (Beef, by comparison, was excellent all the way through and totally felt like it earned and benefited from the length of being a TV show and not a movie), but I do feel like, in this case, it’s a trick to make you think the show is great when in reality it’s average to pretty good.

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⫷ MOVIE #1,922 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,924 ⫸

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Baby Reindeer is a British black comedy thriller drama miniseries created by and starring Richard Gadd, adapted from Gadd's autobiographical one-man show. Directed by Weronika Tofilska and Josephine Bornebusch, it also stars Jessica Gunning, Nava Mau and Tom Goodman-Hill. The miniseries was released on Netflix, where it had a strong viewership and received critical acclaim, being nominated for 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. It was released on April 11, 2024.