In the weekly live session in our online community recently, I gave my thoughts and took questions about Netflix’s hit Baby Reindeer.
It’s been a headline-grabbing limited series. Partly because of how well it’s done, for a small British project with no stars, on a very edgy topic. But also because the internet outed the true inspiration for the female “stalker” who is the primary source of conflict for its main character.
And she’s suing Netflix, complaining that much of it is false and didn’t really happen.
Whether Netflix should not have opened the series with the definitive words “This is a True Story” (perhaps using “inspired by” or even “based on” instead) is for someone else to debate.
I’m here to talk about its story, writing, characters, and how it worked as a series.
And its “PROBLEM” that I want to discuss is my acronym of that word to describe the “7 Elements of a Viable Story.”
Does Baby Reindeer have all those elements? Or does it fall short in one or more areas?
Actually there is one element of “This is a True Story” that’s relevant to that.
First, a quick reminder of what the 7 Elements are:
- Punishing
- Relatable
- Original
- Believable
- Life-Altering
- Entertaining
- Meaningful
Let’s look at these slightly out of order by starting with #4.
BELIEVABLE
I think when we know something really happened, we tend to give it more of a pass on “Believability.” Which is why movies and series point out that fact so much.
And this matters. I find myself stressing “Believable” a lot in my work with writers. Because when the audience is unable to suspend disbelief and thinks you’re contriving something to manipulate them, they rebel. You can’t convince them of anything, or engage them.
But when a piece of writing feels super “authentic,” and seems to come from the writer’s experience or unique voice in a memorable way, that can really make it rise above others.
Without “This is a True Story,” viewers might have trouble accepting as real some of the behavior of both Martha (“the stalker”) and main character Donny – a struggling standup comedian and bartender who Martha latches onto after he shows her some kindness.
But I did feel that what happened resonated as believable, in its messiness and detailed portrayal of people with real issues. The bizarre text of her many emails to him (which I assumed were real) helped with that.
It was a bit like Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs to me — the forensic odd behavior of this “antagonist” character rang true almost because of its minutely observed bizarreness, whereas other more “Hollywood” elements (like Hannibal Lecter!) might seem more “made up.”
In any case, it passed the Believability test for me. How much “This is a True Story” set me up for that, I can’t know for sure.
PUNISHING
The idea of P.R.O.B.L.E.M. is that every good story is based on a problem at its core.
There’s something the main character of the story (and there generally is only one) needs and wants to solve. The problem could be that they haven’t reached a desired goal yet. Same difference. Problem/goal. I use the terms a bit interchangeably.
The key is that they are actively trying to solve this situation, often in every single scene. And that it’s difficult to do that. So difficult that in each attempt to solve it, they usually fail to move in a positive direction, encounter lots of conflict, and end up with a more complicated situation than ever for having tried. Their very efforts to move forward cause a “counterpunch” from forces and people in opposition to them, and now they have more to solve.
This is obviously not fun for them. But it’s fun for us, the audience, to watch.
Baby Reindeer definitely works that way. It’s pretty simple for the most part in that there is one main problem, throughout all 7 episodes. More like a long feature than a typical series. It’s all Donny’s story, and it’s all about “what to do about Martha,” who is making his life more and more difficult. And what he tries to fix this tends to only makes it worse.
He also has a conflict-laden romantic B Story, and one episode flashes back to different compelling problems in an earlier part of his life.
But mostly it’s Donny vs. Martha. And this scenario definitely punishes him hard.
RELATABLE
Audiences and readers get invested partly because of the fun of the main difficulty and watching attempts to solve it – usually finding themself subconsciously rooting for the main character like they might in a sporting event.
They start to emotionally identify with them, and take on their subjective perspective. They feel what they feel, and understand from scene to scene what they’re going through and trying to accomplish. It becomes important to them too.
Baby Reindeer uses a few methods to help make this happen. Donny is sympathetically chasing a dream and failing at it. He does stand-up and nobody laughs. His life is filled with difficulties. His bosses at the bar aren’t nice to him. He has no love life, no real social life. And he tries to be nice to Martha, to let her down easily, to show basic human kindness.
Yes he makes some mistakes and has his flaws, but I think he’s mainly depicted as a decent, troubled individual trying to do the right thing, who pays a heavy cost. And it’s easy to relate to how difficult it would be in his position.
The show also uses voiceover to help with this – to get us to understand what he’s going through and why he makes some of the choices he makes. That device doesn’t always work and can backfire, but here I think it’s useful in getting the audience to relate.
ORIGINAL
I’ve never seen this kind of “stalker” relationship before. It feels brand new and one of a kind to me, the complex humanity being depicted and explored, and the places the show goes beyond simply “fear and loathing of the stalker.”
I’d have a hard time believing anyone would react to this with “I’ve seen it all before.” To me, it breaks new ground. While importantly also fulfilling the other 6 PROBLEM elements. (Sometimes valuing Originality above all else leads to writing that doesn’t.)
LIFE-ALTERING
Are the “stakes” high enough?
They’re not quite “life and death” and it’s not quite a pure thriller.
But I think it’s clear that the Martha situation starts to destroy Donny’s life as he knows it, and makes it impossible to move forward. And not just because of the internal issue of how it all makes him feel, and his psychology.
Her constant emails, texts, showing up, making threats, and never giving him a moment’s peace feels high-stakes in an “external” enough way to me (which screen stories need) – really messing with his life situation, activities and relationships.
ENTERTAINING
But is it fun to watch?
Of course individual tastes can differ.
It doesn’t quite deliver Fatal Attraction-style thrills, although I think it comes close at times, while adding other elements that enrich it and make it more interesting and compelling in its own way.
For me it comes down to whether you’re leaning in, wanting to know what’s going to happen next, experiencing high emotion along the way, thrilled and engaged, surprised and intrigued, and generally strongly invested while enjoying the ride.
While some of it (especially the flashback episode) is hard to watch and disturbing, for me Baby Reindeer passes the “Entertaining” test easily. I binged it more passionately than I’ve binged anything in a while.
MEANINGFUL
Is it about deeper issues, that stick with you?
I definitely think so. It’s not a frothy and forgettable diversion, or all surface plot.
It’s exploring some fundamental facets of the human condition in a complex way. It makes one wonder if it’s truly better to show compassion for someone like Martha, and whether in some way knowing her has helped Donny or not. No easy answers there.
IN CONCLUSION…
I guess you can tell I really liked this show. I think it achieves all 7 of these elements pretty powerfully. I also can imagine – from the reactions of some in our live session yesterday – that some of you probably hated it, or couldn’t get through it, or strongly disagree on one or more of these points.
Feel free to comment below!
Setting the true story controversy aside, so far this has been my favorite show of 2024. It’s fresh, original, truly engaging, disturbing, with well written characters, and a tense storyline with unexpected twists and turns. Great acting and directing too.
I found it to be very dark and difficult to watch. I thought the actors were brilliant with their parts. I binge watched it because I really
wanted to know how this was going to work out. I quickly forwarded through events I didn’t care to put into my mind. It was a mixed bag of emotions, mostly not good emotions. It was definitely different, unusual, odd, and disturbing.
I found it difficult to watch for different reason. I found it really more to be an elevated tabloid TV project. Donny is a good person that does bad things and then pays a price, calling himself a victim and asking us to commiserate. Not much different than Springer.
I agree about finding it hard to watch. I cringed a lot thru it. I felt like a voyeur and not a willing one.
I agree with everything you said except “ Entertaining”. To glorify or sensationalize mental illness is far from entertaining. It shows just how sick our culture has become to call this entertainment. What a downer ending.
Erik,
It was brilliantly done, acting superb. Yet all the disclaimers that this was an almost but not entirely a true story and that they had gone out of their way to disguise the real “Martha” felt patently untrue. Throughout the watching of the series, I felt an awful sense of foreboding doom. Like the creators of this series were children playing with a live grenade. In the outing party since, the fake and the real look almost identical. I have since watched another Netflix series which I like even more, Bodkin. It bills itself as “intentionally fiction”. A smart new moniker. Brilliant series I think too.