Everyone Ignored What Should Have Been The Most Controversial Part Of ‘Baby Reindeer’

The show went once-dangerous places concerning sexual assault, trauma, and behavior

I’m slightly late in saying this, but Netflix’s Baby Reindeer is the best show I have seen in quite some time. (I’ll warn you when spoilers are coming, but what follows is basic plot stuff.) “Based on the award-winning and hit Edinburgh Fringe one-man play,” as Netflix puts it, the show is the supposedly real-life story of a failing young Scottish comedian living in London, who finds himself entangled in an incredibly complex relationship with his stalker. In the show, their respective names are Donny Dunn and Martha Scott. In real life, their names are Richard Gadd — he also wrote and starred in both the one-man show and the Netflix expansion/adaptation — and Fiona Harvey. Harvey is a serial stalker, as is mentioned repeatedly in the show, and had even previously stalked a then-member of parliament’s wife.

Like other fans of Baby Reindeer, I watched with prurient interest as Harvey came forward following the show’s release and gave a rather surreal interview to Piers Morgan last month in which she denied a lot of stuff that’s basically undeniable, in the sense that Netflix (or, more specifically, Netflix’s lawyers) wouldn’t have allowed it to air without thoroughly vetting the evidence. After all, in the opening moments of the opening episode, a notice describing what follows as a true story is splashed on the screen. If there were significant fabrications in the show, it would have likely produced a libel claim, since Harvey was so easy to identify. 

Harvey does not come across as a stable or truthful person. For example, here’s how The Hollywood Reporter summed up some of her activities:

Harvey claims she had no choice in coming forward — “I was forced into this situation” — after “internet sleuths” tracked her down and lodged death threats. She had recently sat down with The Daily Mail (allegedly later stalking that reporter) and been accused in another story of stalking a Glasgow couple (and threatening them with death). But the conversation on Piers Morgan Uncensored has brought the Baby Reindeer brouhaha to another level.

Now Gadd, for his part, did post on social media that people shouldn’t try to track down the show’s real-life subjects. As much as I’m in awe of what the guy has created, this is pretty ridiculous — the show didn’t drop “breadcrumbs” so much as post a giant flashing neon arrow pointing at Harvey, and of course this was the natural outcome!

So a lot of the controversy over the show has centered, naturally, on Harvey’s rebuttal and the prospect that Gadd himself somehow wronged his alleged stalker. I think this is overshadowing a much more interesting controversy — or something that should be a controversy because of how it violates certain well-established taboos.

Spoilers start here.