--- title: "Baby Reindeer" year: 2024 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/baby-reindeer" fi1m_score: 80 critics_score: 71 critics_reviews: 8 published: "2026-09-17T14:39:44.908653+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T14:40:08.372633+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Baby Reindeer (2024) Created by Richard Gadd · MPA TV-MA · Drama **Fi1m score: 80** · Critics 71 from 8 reviews *In a sentence:* Everyone tells him to block her and he opens the next email anyway; so did we > Richard Gadd turns his own stalking into seven episodes that are harder on him than on his stalker, and Jessica Gunning’s Martha is the best thing in it. The narration over-explains and it runs an episode long, but it stays with you. ## Synopsis London, the present day. Donny Dunn (Richard Gadd) pulls pints in a pub by day and does stand-up comedy nobody has asked for by night. One afternoon Martha Scott (Jessica Gunning) comes in crying, he gives her a cup of tea on the house, and she comes back the next day, and the next. Then the emails begin, dozens a day, misspelt and unpunctuated. Donny is trying to build something ordinary with Teri (Nava Mau), a woman he has met online, and to get a set that works. Martha turns up at his gigs. The first episode opens at a police station, where an officer asks why he waited six months to report her. ## Review Richard Gadd wrote *Baby Reindeer*, plays its lead and, the series tells us, lived a version of it. Donny Dunn is a barman in a London pub and a stand-up comedian nobody has asked for. A woman called Martha Scott comes in one afternoon in tears, he gives her a cup of tea on the house, and she comes back the next day, and the day after that. The stalking story is the frame. What Gadd is after is the harder question of why a man who could have ended it in the first week did not, and across seven episodes he answers it with a candour that often made us want to switch off. It is a fine piece of television and it is about an episode too long. Jessica Gunning is the reason to start. Her Martha talks in a rush, laughs a beat longer than the joke, and looks at Donny as if he were a meal. The emails she sends him, misspelt, unpunctuated and arriving at all hours, appear on screen as she types them, and Gunning gives each one a face: pleading, furious, giggling, hurt. She never plays Martha as a monster and never asks us to forgive her. When she is in the pub, in the corner with her tea, we found ourselves watching her rather than him, which is a problem, because the series is about him. Gadd is a stranger performer than his co-star and a more uneven one. He plays Donny with a stoop and an apologetic grin, a man who has decided in advance that nothing he says will land, and the stand-up sets, which are meant to be dreadful, are dreadful in a way that made us wince. He also narrates, and here the stage show underneath the series shows through. The voiceover tells us what Donny is thinking at moments when Gadd’s face has already told us, and by the third episode we had started to resent it. Adapted from Gadd’s own one-man show, the series has kept the monologue and not always noticed that it now has pictures. The pictures are good. Annika Summerson and Krzysztof Trojnar shoot the pub in yellow lamplight with Martha placed at the edge of the frame, so that we are aware of her before Donny is, and Donny’s rented room in a flat grey that makes his laptop screen the brightest thing in it. Debbie Burton’s pub is real down to the carpet. Weronika Tofilska and Josephine Bornebusch, who share the directing, hold on faces longer than television usually dares. Sacha and Evgueni Galperine keep the music out of the pub almost entirely and bring in low, held strings under the emails, so that a message arriving sounds like a footstep behind you. Then there is the fourth episode. It leaves Martha behind and goes back to explain how Donny arrived at that bar, and we will say only that it is the reason for the 18 certificate and that we watched most of it rigid and slightly sick. Gadd films it without music and without any mercy towards himself. Nothing else in the series is as controlled, and nothing after it is quite as necessary. Which is the trouble with the back half. Episodes five and six circle the same ground, Donny reads the emails again, Donny does something he knows he should not, Donny apologises to the wrong person, and Peter Oliver, Benjamin Gerstein and Mike Holliday cut each round tighter without making it new. Nava Mau’s Teri, the woman Donny is trying to have an ordinary relationship with, is the one person on screen behaving like an adult, and the script keeps sending her home so it can get back to the laptop. Nina Sosanya, as Liz, whose house Donny lodges in, is warm in a part that barely exists. The final episode ties things off more neatly than the six before it have earned. Most critics are somewhere near us. The reviews split hard, a clutch of raves and two papers that found it a slog, and we can see both from where we sit. It is heavy, and it goes on for an episode after it has finished saying what it came to say. Watch it in two or three sittings rather than one, and do not skip the fourth episode however much the third has tempted you to. *Fi1m score 80, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics come away shaken and impressed. The reviews agree that Richard Gadd’s account of being stalked is honest to the point of discomfort, and that its refusal to make him a tidy victim is the point rather than a flaw. Praise clusters on the fourth episode, which several reviews single out as the hour dealing with abuse and assault, and on Jessica Gunning’s performance as Martha, which even the sceptics admire. The reservations are about shape. Two of the eight dissent sharply, both finding the series gruelling as drama: The Telegraph argues the voiceover gives away its stage origins and that it lags, while The Guardian finds it relentlessly bleak and frustrating in scope across seven episodes. The Times, broadly positive, also thinks it runs a couple of episodes too long. The spread is wide, with nothing in the middle. ### Reviews we read (8) - **Radio Times** (5/5): The soul-baring seven-part series is a gripping emotional rollercoaster that paints a horrifying picture of abuse, drug dependency and sexual assault in its standout fourth episode. It is one of the most powerful pieces of television of the year and an early contender for show of 2024. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/baby-reindeer-review-netflix/) - **Variety**, Aramide Tinubu (90/100, inferred): The compelling and unsettling miniseries untangles the nuances of Gadd's emotions, his stalker's temperament and past incidents that shaped his frame of mind. It is a rare gem on television: shocking, hilarious, painful and devastating while unpacking the frailties of human emotion and mental illness. [Read](https://variety.com/2024/tv/reviews/baby-reindeer-review-richard-gadd-1235975310/) - **The i Paper**, Rachael Healy (85/100, inferred): The series complicates the stalker narrative and deconstructs the idea of a 'perfect victim' through Gadd's introspective narration and unflinching look at his experiences. It challenges perceptions of victims and raises urgent questions about support for the mentally ill and stalking victims. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/baby-reindeer-review-stalkers-3000080) - **Empire**, David Opie (80/100, inferred): Gadd revisits his most difficult moments with unflinching honesty and self-condemnation, blurring moral lines in unpredictable ways while highlighting the tragedy of shame, mental illness and inept policing. It is not an easy watch by any means, but a vital one rooted in comedy yet profoundly moving and disturbing. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/baby-reindeer/) - **The Times**, Hugo Rifkind (70/100, inferred): The troubling, different and really good series explores a world of dopamine hits and prurient obsessions. It praises staggering moments of redemption and emotional impact but notes it may be a couple of episodes too long. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/baby-reindeer-review-what-if-you-had-a-stalker-and-liked-it-hl0tk2m2t) - **The Guardian** (30/100, inferred): The series is a tense, creepily filmed adaptation of Gadd’s play about stalking that builds into a relentlessly bleak self-loathing horror. It singles out Jessica Gunning’s knockout performance as Martha and the disturbing fourth episode for particular praise while noting it becomes frustrating in scope. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/apr/11/netflix-baby-reindeer-review-features-the-most-chilling-tv-episode-of-the-entire-year) - **The Telegraph** (30/100, inferred): Richard Gadd’s stage show becomes gruelling but compelling TV as a psychological death spiral and public therapy session. It praises the honesty of the self-combusting portrait but complains that voiceover betrays its stage roots and it lags as drama. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2024/04/11/baby-reindeer-netflix-review-richard-gadd/) - **Collider**, Therese Lacson (9/10): The critic calls it an autobiographical masterpiece that skillfully explores trauma and obsession in seven episodes. Intense performances, especially by Gadd and Jessica Gunning as the complex Martha, make it a must-watch despite heavy themes. [Read](https://collider.com/baby-reindeer-netflix-review/) ## Details - **Created by:** Richard Gadd - **Creator:** Richard Gadd - **Director:** Weronika Tofilska, Josephine Bornebusch - **Writer:** Richard Gadd - **Cinematography:** Krzysztof Trojnar, Annika Summerson - **Editor:** Peter Oliver, Benjamin Gerstein, Mike Holliday - **Music:** Sacha Galperine, Evgueni Galperine - **Production design:** Debbie Burton - **Costume design:** Mekel Bailey - **Producer:** Matthew Mulot - **Cast:** Richard Gadd as Donny Dunn; Jessica Gunning as Martha Scott; Nava Mau as Teri; Leroy Brito as Compere; Hugh Coles as Francis; Thomas Coombes as Daniels; Danny Kirrane as Gino; Nina Sosanya as Liz - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 11 April 2024 - **Genres:** Drama - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eafm1gB6SCM ## Where to watch in the US - Netflix: streaming *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *I May Destroy You* (2020), Fi1m 88: Michaela Coel’s own assault, written and played by her, with the same refusal to tidy up. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/i-may-destroy-you.md) - *Play Misty for Me* (1971): Clint Eastwood’s first film as director, a radio DJ and the fan who will not go away. - *Perfect Blue* (1997), Fi1m 82: A Japanese pop singer, a stalker and a mind coming apart, drawn rather than filmed. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/perfect-blue.md) - *Hidden* (2005): Michael Haneke sends videotapes to a Paris family and never explains who is watching. - *Fleabag* (2016), Fi1m 90: Another one-person stage show turned series, with a lead who lies to the camera. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/fleabag.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/baby-reindeer