The British series My little reindeerby Richard Gadd, inspired by his own story of a man sexually harassed and abused, is enjoying unexpected success on Netflix.
It begins as a banal story. One day Martha enters the pub where Donny, a failed comedian, works. She looks distraught, he offers her a cup of tea. This is the beginning of a story of harassment, which reveals itself over the episodes to be very murky and complicated. This is what it says My little reindeera British series in 7 episodes, which is a great success on Netflix.
This series is inspired by what actor Richard Gadd (who plays Donny) experienced, harassed by a woman, who pursued him for several years. Following him home, harassing his loved ones, sending him thousands of emails and voice messages.
“It’s a series about bullying, it’s very autobiographical,” explained Richard Gadd on the London Live show. “It’s about the six years since that cup of tea.”
“Sometimes I asked myself, how could this happen to me? How did it get to this point?”
Raise awareness about harassment
Beyond the story of a woman who harasses a man, My little reindeer explores the complex and unhealthy relationship that develops between Donny and Martha. Because the stalker is portrayed here as an insecure character, who seems reluctant to try to get rid of this woman’s influence. “Why did you wait so long,” the police officer replies, when he finally decides to file a complaint. Here repulsion sometimes gives way to attraction, and the harassed sometimes becomes a harasser. Who needs the other more?
The series is also intended to make people think about the perception of trauma. Because if Donny lets Martha take up so much space in his life, it is because he is broken by an event suffered a few years earlier, a sexual assault.
Some episodes also carry warnings addressed to spectators about the harshness of the scenes, as well as advice to turn to associations, if you yourself are the victim of such actions.
“This type of series, which is made to be very dramatized, very spectacular, to interest the viewer, nevertheless makes it possible to make people watching aware of the weak signals of the beginning of harassment, to try to see when things drift”, underlines clinical psychologist Johanna Rozenblum on BFMTV.
Stunning actors
The performances of the actors, Richard Gadd in his own role, and Jessica Gunning, who plays Martha, both breathtaking, make this series “impossible to put down”, despite the discomfort it arouses, as Stephen King wrote in a column for The Times, calling it “one of the best things he’s ever seen.”
The character of Donny Dunn, a failed comedian, skinny and stooped, permanently uncomfortable, exudes a lack of self-confidence. We understand why he appreciates and feels reassured by Martha’s compliments. He also blames himself for instigating harassment and even encouraging it.
“If people see (the series) they will know almost everything about me,” Richard Gadd tells the Times. “Maybe they will judge, maybe they will not agree and that worries me, but I signed up for that. (In the series) You hate Martha, many times, and many times many times, it’s me you hate.”
The series, based on a true story, also aroused the curiosity of certain viewers, who set out in search of the real Martha, even though Richard Gadd ensured that she was not recognizable in the series.
To the point of leading to certain deviations. It didn’t take very long for Internet users transformed into detectives to identify a person who could be Richard Gadd’s stalker. They also wrongly accused a screenwriter and realist of being the author of the sexual assault of Richard Gadd, in particular because he physically resembles the actor who plays him in the series. For this one such speculations are not at all the point of the series.
