Baby Reindeer's 'Martha' on Piers Morgan: a hunt for the truth

A "dark and twisted tale" about one man's real-life experience of being stalked by a deranged Scottish lawyer, "Baby Reindeer" started as a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, said Beth Hale in the Daily Mail. 

Now, it has become a sensation on Netflix, and has taken on a "life of its own". Last month, the drama's writer and star, Richard Gadd, had to implore fans to stop trying to work out the identities of the series's two antagonists: "Martha", the female stalker, and a sexually abusive male TV producer.

But names were put forward online even so and, last week, a Scottish lawyer outed herself as "Martha". In a YouTube interview with Piers Morgan, Fiona Harvey, 58, admitted that she'd known Gadd, a fellow Scot, but "needless to say" she denied that, over at least three years, she'd sent him 41,071 emails and 350 hours of voicemail messages, that she'd attacked his girlfriend, smashed up the London pub in which he worked, and been sent to jail.

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'Shabby exercise in click chasing'

Is she telling the whole truth? She was not the most convincing of witnesses, said Samantha Herbert in the London Evening Standard. But she came across as vulnerable, and the interview felt exploitative. At the start, she admitted that she'd only decided to tell her story because she was being "hounded" online, and had received death threats. But the interview has just led to more "vitriol".

Morgan's broadcast was a "shabby exercise in click chasing", said Josephine Bartosch on UnHerd – and a successful one: it was watched 11 million times within a few days. We can criticise him for his irresponsibility, but if we didn't lap up this stuff, he wouldn't make it.

Netflix executives can rest easy

Gadd has questions to answer too, said Ryan Coogan in The Independent. He has a right to tell his story, but in his quest for fame, he has carelessly dragged someone else into the spotlight who did not choose to be there.

But, ultimately, Netflix should take the blame for what amounts to a massive compliance failure, said Marina Hyde in The Guardian. It billed the series not as "inspired by real events", but as "a true story", though this was bound to spark a search for the real-life people involved. It claims that Gadd and the drama's makers took all reasonable measures to disguise them, but Harvey even looks like the Martha character. Had the BBC been behind this mess, director-general Tim Davie would have been forced to resign and his underlings would be having sleepless nights. But Netflix executives can rest easy, knowing they've created a massive global hit for a streaming giant that probably doesn't give a stuff about some "local handwringing".