Rarely have I been drawn into a story as much as that of Baby Reindeer. The series about a struggling stand-up comedian who is stalked after offering a free cup of tea to a distressed woman in a cafe is haunting, fantastic television. Baby Reindeer touched me, and not only because, as a starting stand-up comedian, I recently stood in a cafe on Albert Cuyp in Amsterdam making jokes in front of six lesbians – one of them did not even speak Dutch.
No, it was in the nuances, in how the simple premise turned out to be so much more layered, in the emotional twists, in the empathy and reflection. And in the – spoiler alert – queer panic of the main character and a depiction of grooming and male-on-male sexual abuse that I had rarely seen so miserably raw on television. But perhaps the appeal of the series is mainly that the story is true, and that the main character is played by the man who really happened to it all.
That’s exactly where things went wrong last week. Although writer and protagonist Richard Gadd (‘Donny’ in the series) said in interviews that the ‘truth’ in his series was mainly an ’emotional truth’ and he had made sure that the stalker (‘Martha’ in the series) was a fictional personality – it took a predictably short time before keyboard detectives started looking for the real stalker. Also to the real man from Gadd’s career who abused him. Because of course they did. Give modern man a finger, within a week the hand to which it belongs turns out to have been wrong in the war.
People found a clip of the real Gadd with a distinct smile that closely resembled that of stalker Martha. They found old tweets from a woman that were very similar in tone to messages Martha sent to Donny. Which is first of all dangerous and has already had expected consequences. A man was also named as the one who once abused Gadd, and Gadd himself had to declare that he had nothing to do with it. This director and writer is now having the police investigate all threats and accusations against him. And also the real Martha, as far as the woman that tabloid The Daily Mail spoke that is, threatens with a lawsuit.
Can you, as sounds, accuse Gadd of not sufficiently protecting the privacy of those involved? No, if your door is not properly locked, it does not justify a burglary. It is at best a bit naive to think that no one will try. When he Baby Reindeer when a one-man show played in the theater years ago, nothing happened. TV is a different beast, the internet no less than a monster.
Jessica Gunning, the actress who plays Martha, urged viewers not to look for the real Martha. “If that happens, it shows that they have not looked at the series properly.” Precisely. Watch the series, watch the series carefully, and dare to let it ‘just’ be a beautiful series.
Frank Huiskamp will replace Marcel van Roosmalen in the coming weeks.
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