Baby Reindeer has united both sides of the culture war
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Like so many other things considered cool, happening and of the moment, I have arrived late to Baby Reindeer. Forgive me, but when you like to be in bed by 9pm, there are precious few opportunities to sit and watch six hours of bleak television about stalking and sexual assault. Anyway, I carved out the time last week, to see what all the fuss was about and… well, I have to say I was very surprised. Not by the fascinating take that Richard Gadd has on his alleged stalker, ‘Martha’. And not by the rather weird turn of events that has seen a seemingly vulnerable woman thrust into the limelight (Netflix is surely only days away from announcing we are all taking part in a live episode of Black Mirror).
No, the thing that surprises me most about Baby Reindeer is that this weird little programme has cut through, becoming not just a national sensation, but a global one. Everyone, regardless of age or political persuasion, is absolutely obsessed with it. This odd drama about a pair of disturbed Scottish humans living in north London has done what no politician, celebrity or TV programme has ever managed before: it has actually managed to unite both sides of the culture war.
I mean, it’s very progressive, isn’t it? The main character, Donny Dunn, goes out with a trans woman. He works in a pub in north London. He does comedy. He’s basically the very epitome of the woke blob. And yet. Even the anti-woke love it! They can’t get enough of it! Five stars from both the Socialist Worker’s Party and The Reclaim Party! Gen Z and Boomers are putting down their weapons and coming together to discuss the show’s dark and nuanced portrayal of stalking. At family dinner tables around the country, which have not been peaceful since the outbreak of Brexit, grandparents and students are finally able to talk about something without coming to blows. Even Piers Morgan, surely one of the most anti-woke people in all of the media, dedicated an entire show to it last week. And in all of this coverage, and debate, there’s been not a peep of complaint about trans ideology being rammed down people’s throats, or Lefties taking over the media. Just a bit of a stink about Netflix’s apparent lack of a compliance department and the legal ramifications of Gadd creating a fictionalised drama about some things that once happened in real life, which is surely what happens in about 95 per cent of art.
I’ve been trying to work out what it is about Baby Reindeer that has done the impossible and united both Left and Right, and I think I’ve worked it out. It’s because it is about the most universally human thing there is: self-loathing and the need for unconditional love. When Gadd’s character sits on stage and announces that the only thing he loves more than his ex-girlfriend is hating himself, even the hardened blokes in the audience let out a whimper of recognition. When he goes to his buttoned-up parents to tell them about being raped, and how unsure he is about his sexuality, he is both surprised and delighted when they clutch him to their collective bosom and announce they will always love him no matter what. You don’t have to have been through some overt trauma, as Gadd’s character has, to relate to the absolute healing joy he feels at being utterly accepted by his mum and dad. Who among us hasn’t hankered for that desperately at some point or other in our lives?
And then there’s Martha. I don’t personally believe that Gadd’s portrayal of his alleged stalker is exploitative – I cannot for a moment imagine this being said if the genders were reversed – and in truth, I think that the show provides one of the most beautifully empathetic depictions of what drives people to behave criminally. In a parallel universe, there is a version of Baby Reindeer where the stalking serves as little more than fodder for a schlocky psychological thriller and everyone sits happily in their roles as goodies and baddies. But there is none of that in Gadd’s show. Donny needs Martha as much as she needs him. They are both driven by self-hatred and the need for outside approval. The stalked and the stalker are not so different, we realise: in the words of the late, great Jo Cox, they have far more in common than that which divides them.
And perhaps that’s the most surprising thing about Baby Reindeer. That in a seemingly split world, where it feels as if the only things that sell are sex and shouting one another down, the biggest ratings hit of all turns out to be a programme that asks us to explore our similarities, and not our differences. One that invites us not to hate one another, but to love.
