Baby Reindeer: Should we feel guilty for watching (and obsessing over) the Netflix show?

The Baby Reindeer backlash is far from over, as a letter appears to show that Netflix was aware that the ‘real-life Martha’ – who the show was based on – was not convicted of stalking.

In the show, Martha’s character is portrayed as pleading guilty to stalking and being sentenced to prison. After the show aired, Fiona Harvey, a Scottish lawyer, was identified as the woman ‘Martha’ was based on. She then appeared on Piers Morgan’s TV show to deny that she’d ever been convicted.

In May earlier this year, Benjamin King, Netflix’s senior UK director of public policy, told Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee that Baby Reindeer was a “true story of the horrific abuse” suffered by Gadd “at the hands of a convicted stalker.”

A subsequent letter to the committee from King clarifies that “the person on whom the show is based — who we have at no point sought to identify — was subject to a court order rather than a conviction.”

A Netflix spokesperson told Deadline, “The letter was sent to the DCMS Select Committee on 23 May, well before any legal case was filed, and has been publicly available since. It does not impact our legal position.”

Here, we revisit Beth McColl’s essay about the ethics of watching (and obsessing over) the controversial show.

I watched Baby Reindeer with everyone else. And, like everyone else, I found it compelling, viscerally upsetting in parts, hard to watch, stunningly original, oddly uplifting and haunting. Naively I thought the final episode would be the end of it.

Such is the speed of new releases on competing streaming sites; I assumed that another hot new show would appear the following week and eclipse it.

The persistence of the Baby Reindeer news cycle has been unusual. Typically, we watch a show that stirs up some discourse which rages online for days or a week, and then it eases and exits the public consciousness almost entirely. Not so in this case.

First, the internet discussed it at length. Media outlets covered it. Then, viewers of the show began to speculate on what real-life figures the characters were based on. Then, they claimed to have tracked down Martha on X and Facebook. They named a man they fervently believed to be the abuser and rapist Darrien.

At this point, Baby Reindeer’s creator, Richard Gadd, put out a statement on his Instagram to clear the man’s name, just an innocent former colleague, he said. He also urged these viewers to stop their searching. “Please don’t speculate on who any of the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show.”

Last night, an interview aired. Piers Morgan sat down to talk to Fiona Harvey, the woman who claims to be who the character of Martha was based on. When announced, Piers’ ‘world exclusive’ was met with anger, glee, concern, and horror – all of which are highly useful responses when your profits come from interaction and outrage.