Baby Reindeer

Gadd could have written a simple victim narrative. He did not. Baby Reindeer builds a genuine stalker portrait and then, halfway through, pivots to ask why Donny found Martha's attention addictive in the first place — and what prior trauma primed him to accept it.

That pivot is what distinguishes the show from every other true-crime adjacent drama of the year. It refuses the simplicity of pure victimhood and insists that the story only makes sense if both characters are rendered with full interiority.

Gunning plays Martha without any of the stalker-trope shortcuts. Martha is funny, lonely, visibly unwell, and dangerous in ascending proportions. The performance refuses caricature and insists on the character's humanity, which is precisely why the harassment lands with the weight it does.

Gadd's performance as Donny is the structural counterweight. He is not asking the audience to admire him; he is asking the audience to witness a specific kind of shame. The two performances make each other possible.

The fourth episode, a standalone flashback to Donny's relationship with a television producer, is the most difficult hour of TV in 2024. It restructures the entire series in retrospect and earns every formal risk it takes.

The series' compact half-hour episode length is a moral choice, not a pacing one. The show is too intense to sustain at a traditional drama length, and the format forces the viewer to metabolize each chapter before continuing.

Pros: A moral complexity rare in any medium; two lead performances operating at the top of the industry; a structural willingness to implicate its protagonist.

Cons: Contains graphic sexual assault content that some viewers will not be able to watch; the real-world controversy surrounding its 'true story' framing is ongoing and worth reading about before watching; the harassment scenes are legitimately upsetting.