The Baby Reindeer saga is a Netflix drama that has evolved into an equally interesting, headline-grabbing meta-drama, where every party seems to have made mistakes. What seems apparent at this stage is this. Fiona Harvey appears to be an unpleasant, unstable woman, who has caused plenty of suffering and anxiety to, at minimum, Laura Wray and Richard Gadd. Richard Gadd seems to have lacked a proper handle on the truth claims of his drama, and we know at least one or two of the principal claims in the drama were false (for example, it appears that Fiona Harvey never served a custodial sentence, as portrayed in the drama). And Netflix appears to have seriously messed up in allowing a ‘This is a true story’ drama to be aired that wasn’t wholly a true story.
Both Richard Gadd and Netflix may have been irresponsible in enabling the real Fiona Harvey to have been identified so easily (by using real Tweets in the show, Internet sleuths had no trouble tracking her down). And Laura Wray appears to be very credible, and seems to be telling the truth about her dreadful experience, after having the severe misfortune of encountering Fiona Harvey several years ago. Fiona Harvey and her legal team have apparently now filed a lawsuit against Netflix to the tune of $170 million in damages.
Now, there are still some unknowns yet to materialise, but given how culpable Fiona Harvey is in her historical behaviour, I don’t like to think of her making a fortune off her own historically bad conduct. The extent to which she is now a victim of the Baby Reindeer show’s popularity is hard to separate from the notion that there wouldn’t have been a Baby Reindeer drama if she hadn’t allegedly conducted herself so badly towards Richard Gadd and Laura Wray in the first place. Equally, given the false claims in the drama, combined with the mistake in calling it a true story, both Richard Gadd and Netflix have errors to account for as well.
I watched Baby Reindeer on its first week of release. I think it’s a brilliant drama, and the sensitive subject matter was handled with aplomb. But it seems like this whole meta-drama saga could have been avoided if only they’d begun with the disclaimer: “This is based on a true story, but some scenes have been changed for dramatic effect.”
Although, all that said, it might transpire that the famous aphorism from Oscar Wilde, “There's only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”, may turn out to be the case for all the main parties involved in this saga.
