Gadd’s gruelling dark night of the soul is compelling TV
Like Patrick Melrose in Edward St Aubyn’s remarkable series of novels, there is something thrilling in watching a man selfcombust. Baby Reindeer (Netflix), a seven-part drama by Richard Gadd based on his stage play of the same name, is one long psychological death spiral, but it is oddly compelling seeing Gadd’s real-life story play out.
Based on his award-winning Edinburgh Fringe one-man play, Baby Reindeer follows struggling comedian Donny Dunn’s (Gadd) warped relationship with his female stalker Martha (Jessica Gunning). She walks into the pub at which he’s been working while trying to make it as a comedian, and she’s so clearly unhinged that she might as well set off the wacko klaxon. Baby Reindeer (the title comes from her nickname for Donny) attempts to answer the most glaring question – why would a sane man have anything to do with a woman whom his very first Google search reveals to be a “Deranged Lawyer Struck Off for Stalking”? – with a detailed, masochistic character study. Donny, later episodes reveal, is addicted to any affirmation that he can get, courtesy of a deeply buried earlier trauma. (Episode five, which is harrowing and explicit, takes you through every beat.) Even as he knows he should cut the rope with Martha, he can’t help but put himself up for more punishment.
It makes for a difficult watch. While Gunning is stunning as Martha (augmenting her reputation as a top comic actress with a performance that should see her go full Olivia Colman), we do spend a lot of time with Gadd staring blankly into the camera. His life unravels on a loop, with one bad choice following another and every rock bottom a false floor. The honesty is laudable – this is one long, dark night of the soul – but as drama it lags.
The over-reliance of voice-over also betrays Baby Reindeer’s stage roots. On screen you can show more and tell less, yet though a great deal of Baby Reindeer is filmed in close-up, it still relies on a narrator to do the emotional legwork.
But then the emotions it is trying to convey are complex. Donny has a need for attention that has come from abuse. It’s made him, as he says at one point, “a sticking plaster for life’s weirdos”. It’s also made him introspective to the point of narcissism – and he is fully aware of these contradictory impulses.
It is, in other words, public therapy. The question is, do you want to go there? It’s a complex, self-defeating portrait of a mind eating itself alive. It’s not fun and it’s not meant to be – that’s admirable as art, perhaps less so as entertainment. Benji Wilson
If you thought one job interview was nerve-jangling, how about four back-to-back? With each grilling conducted by a fearsome inquisitor, hellbent on finding holes in your CV? Oh, and the small matter of TV cameras capturing your every stumble or bead of sweat in unforgiving close-up? Welcome to The Apprentice (BBC One) interview round – the part that candidates dread but viewers relish.
The penultimate episode of the series saw the final five hopefuls summoned to an east London skyscraper to be hauled over the coals by Lord Sugar’s “trusted advisors”. The subsequent interrogations were enjoyably brutal to watch. Sheer televised schadenfreude.
Fashion veteran Linda Plant delivered withering assessments of their “fairy tale” business plans. Media mogul Claudine Collins played good cop, asking about proud parents and deceased siblings to elicit emotional reactions. Publishing pioneer Mike Soutar was the research fiend, pouncing on unfounded claims and unsecured web domain names. The pitbull-like Claude Littner crunched the numbers, dismissing financial projections as “ludicrous”, “woefully inadequate” or “the rantings of a lunatic”. Don’t go changing, Claude.
The contest is looking rather dog-eared in its 18th series – Sugar’s retirement and a wholesale revamp are surely imminent – but the interview round is one of the increasingly rare moments when it still delivers. After 10 noisy weeks of boardroom boasting, barking orders and backstabbing colleagues, this was a quieter pleasure. Mano a mano with words rather than action, and all the more gripping for it.
In a tense climax, it was pie-maker Phil Turner and fitness-studio owner Rachel Woolford who progressed to next week’s final. Pies versus gyms. The cause of excess flab versus the remedy. Woolford looks the stronger candidate and if she prevails, would become the fifth consecutive female winner. Women clearly mean business. It might well be time for one to take over from the boardroom boss. With sincere regret, Lord Sugar, you’re tired. Michael Hogan
Baby Reindeer ★★★
The Apprentice ★★★