This text consists of spoilers for all of “Child Reindeer.”
The mini-series “Child Reindeer” arrived on Netflix on April 11 with out a lot advance hype, however it shortly turned some of the talked-about TV exhibits of 2024.
It’s not exhausting to know why. Primarily based on the Scottish comic Richard Gadd’s award-winning 2019 one-man stage present, “Child Reindeer” baits its hook within the first episode, which introduces Martha (Jessica Gunning), an emotionally fragile middle-aged girl who appreciates the kindness proven to her by Donny (Gadd), a struggling stand-up comedian who affords her a free drink within the pub the place he works.
By the top of that first episode, Martha’s neediness has begun to shade into creepiness. And by the point Donny discovers that his new good friend has a historical past of stalking, she’s already begun what’s going to finally grow to be a torrent of abuse, as she floods his electronic mail and social media with poorly spelled messages that insult his character and generally threaten sexual violence.
What makes “Child Reindeer” so efficient is that as Martha pushes additional and additional into Donny’s private life — attending his comedy exhibits, befriending his landlady, calling his dad and mom — the viewers shares his mounting emotions of powerlessness and frustration, minimize with flashes of pity for the girl who’s ruining his life. The present has the “slow-motion prepare wreck” enchantment of a twisty true-crime documentary, however balanced with empathy for 2 profoundly damaged folks.
A narrative as darkish and uneasy as this one wants a correct ending, although. “Child Reindeer” has one that’s satisfying in its particulars, if haunting in its implications.
Gadd (who wrote each episode) crops the seeds for the finale within the penultimate episode, the sixth, which ends with Donny having a career-altering meltdown whereas competing in a stand-up comedy contest. Donny’s comedian fashion is extremely conceptual, involving corny props and awkward jokes, designed to go away his viewers questioning whether or not or not they’re meant to chuckle. He’s like a Scottish (and far much less efficient) model of Steve Martin in his “Wild and Loopy Man” days. (Or, as Donny places it: “I’m a comic once they chuckle, a efficiency artist once they don’t.”)
When the group can’t get on his wavelength on the competitors, Donny ditches his props and simply talks, sharing with a shocked viewers the story that now we have been expecting the earlier 5 episodes. He tells them about how when he was a younger and inexperienced comic, he took an unpaid gig working for Darrien O’Connor (Tom Goodman-Hill), a well-respected TV author who repeatedly drugged and sexually assaulted him. He tells them about his transgender girlfriend, Teri (Nava Mau), whom he’s too embarrassed to kiss in public.
And, in fact, he tells them about Martha, the angel and the satan on his shoulders: generally telling him how candy, humorous and good-looking he’s, and generally calling him a weak-willed, talentless degenerate.
Because the present’s seventh and last episode opens, a video of Donny’s train-wreck efficiency has landed on YouTube (below the title “Comic Has Epic Breakdown”), bringing him viral fame and new alternatives. The stress of that greater profile — coupled with Martha’s ceaseless string of threatening voice mail messages — prompts Donny to speak in confidence to his unexpectedly sympathetic dad and mom about being raped. All of those confessions really feel liberating.
Not too lengthy after, certainly one of Martha’s threats is dire sufficient to get her arrested — and finally jailed. Gadd brings the battle between Donny and Martha to a logical conclusion, with Martha lastly acknowledging the hurt she’s executed by pleading responsible.
So Donny lives fortunately … however not for ever after. Extra like for a day or two.
The unsettling ambiguities of the “Child Reindeer” epilogue — the true ending, which comes after Martha is safely locked away — are an enormous a part of what has made the present a word-of-mouth hit.
First, Donny finds himself going again over Martha’s outdated messages, and turning each certainly one of their previous interactions into items of a puzzle that he then pins up on his wall — like a detective attempting to crack a sophisticated case. His inquiry even leads him again to the doorstep of the person who molested him, the place Donny falls into an outdated sample of deference and eagerness to please.
Then, within the collection’s knockout closing scene, a bartender provides a teary-eyed Donny a free drink, echoing what Donny as soon as did for Martha. What makes Donny so upset? Take your decide: He’s nonetheless processing what Martha and Darrien have executed to him. He’s livid with himself for not standing as much as his abuser. He attained the celebrity he all the time craved and located that it didn’t remedy his issues.
The ultimate set off comes when, as he listens to certainly one of Martha’s outdated messages, he hears her clarify that she all the time calls him “reindeer” as a result of he reminds her of her the stuffed toy that comforted her throughout a tough childhood. For a second, this former terrifying nuisance goes again to being an individual worthy of understanding and even grace. Or possibly, once more, it’s really empathy: Donny ending the story in the identical state through which he first encountered Martha makes manifest the bond between them.
A part of the worldwide reputation of “Child Reindeer” is little doubt a results of the online sleuth dimension — the web rush to determine the true figures behind Martha and Darrien. Gadd has discouraged such hypothesis, and harmless folks have been accused.
However a lot of the present’s distinctive enchantment comes from how, at a time when trauma narratives virtually have grow to be cliché in high-end TV drama, “Child Reindeer” presents a extra nuanced model of 1. It authentically depicts trauma and psychological sickness as complicated, unpredictable and deeply private, all of which is underscored by the emotional ambivalence of its conclusion.
“Child Reindeer” depends quite a bit on its subjective perspective. Donny’s voice-over narration dominates each episode, recounting in vivid element his disgust with himself. The collection’s two administrators, Weronika Tofilska and Josephine Bornebusch, typically hold the digicam educated on Donny’s face, capturing his emotions of disorientation as even his greatest moments are disrupted by Martha’s fixed intrusions. Viewers are drawn deep into Donny’s neuroses, which embrace, he and we start to know, an dependancy to being the thing of 1 girl’s obsession.
However whereas this present holds near Donny’s perspective, in a method it additionally sees the world by way of Martha’s eyes — or not less than to the extent that Donny identifies together with her. She’s out of his life by the top of the finale, however he nonetheless has to stay with that a part of himself that feels precisely how she feels.
All through “Child Reindeer,” Donny struggles to elucidate why he’s no more proactive in terms of Martha. Why doesn’t he warn his associates about her? Why does he take so lengthy to get the police concerned? Why doesn’t he freeze her out the primary time she turns bizarre?
The reply is that, on some stage, he will get it. He too is misplaced, lonely and awkward a lot of the time. That’s why there is no such thing as a actual triumph in besting Martha. For Donny, it’s like defeating himself — one thing he already does almost every single day.
