Baby Reindeer: will armchair detectives spell the end for 'true story' dramas?

"Baby Reindeer" begins by telling viewers that "this is a true story". Now the Netflix hit is at the centre of another real-life drama, starring an army of armchair detectives.

The seven-part TV series stars comedian Richard Gadd and combines two autobiographical plays he wrote and which "premiered to rave reviews" at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, said Vox. Gadd's character, called Donny, is stalked by a woman named Martha and sexually assaulted by a comedy agent, with both "deeply disturbing events" depicted through a "lens of intentional overexposure". 

Although the names have been changed, and some fictional elements have been added, speculation about the "real-life mystery" of the perpetrators' true identities has raged since the series premiered last month. 

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Legal dramas

Some viewers "quickly created a horrible sort of sequel", said Eva Wiseman in The Guardian, by attempting to expose the stalker on social media. "Historic tweets were urgently screengrabbed, photographs posted side by side, she was quote-tweeted as if a celebrity – the character's name was trending for days." In a now-deleted post on Instagram, Gadd asked: "Please don't speculate on who any of the real-life people could be. That's not the point of our show."

Internet sleuths also tried to identify the real "high-profile comedy agent", played by Tom Goodman-Hill in the show, who allegedly raped Gadd, said the Daily Mail. After being falsely accused, theatre director Sean Foley tweeted: "Police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory abusive and threatening posts against me."

Netflix and Gadd "should have changed more key details to stop 'armchair detectives' trying to hunt out" the people the characters were based on, lawyers told the paper. The woman who is supposedly the real "Martha" has since claimed she will be suing Gadd and Netflix.

'Patient zero'

Before social media, such large-scale discussion, and detection, would have been impossible. I have "huge sympathy" for Gadd, said Marina Hyde on "The Rest Is Entertainment" podcast, because he should be allowed to tell his story. But TV companies should "understand the era they are living in" and should have foreseen the social media reaction. More of the story should have been "better disguised".

You "don't have to be Coleen Rooney" to work out who Martha is, said co-host Richard Osman. For anyone making a show about real people, this might be the moment when "compliance just got tightened by about 8000%". This will be the "patient zero".

"Gadd is by no means the first creator to confront the slippery ethics around true crime," said Vox. There is a paradox at play. Subjects of other series have "spoken out about the ways that fictionalized versions of their reality have revictimized them".

Some of the controversy surrounding "Baby Reindeer" was perhaps inspired by the scene where Donny goes online and "begins digging up dirt on his own stalker", said Vox. Although Gadd might not have anticipated the "runaway success" of the show, "it seems clear that he could have at least anticipated that if he couldn't resist Googling his stalker, neither could anyone else".