A series titled My Stuffed Reindeer has to be a sugary product, ideal for all audiences and possibly a guilty pleasure for when Christmas approaches. Well, that’s how it should be. But the new Netflix production is something like the girl on the road in series format: you move calmly through the Netflix catalog, it appears out of nowhere with its striking title and, if you accidentally hit it, it makes you explode. any vital plan you had that day.
Donny (Richard Gadd) is an aspiring comedian who spends his days pouring pints at the bar when a woman (Jessica Gunning), who says her name is Martha, sits at the bar with sadness on her face. She says she doesn’t have money to drink anything. He, feeling sorry for her, invites her to have tea, aware of her that she needs help from her. At that moment he does not understand the mistake he has made: Martha, excited by her kindness, becomes obsessed with the waiter. And the thing is, when you are a professional harasser like her, no more excuse is needed.
Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, who writes, produces and stars in the series, draws inspiration from his own life when writing Stuffed Reindeer. It is already a classic of the latest British artists who have excelled in comedy, although it is impossible to refer to this work as something similar to humor. As he was making his way in the world, his real stalker sent him 106 pages of letters, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 350 hours of voicemails and 41,071 emails, in addition to following him home on several occasions.
The first episode is disturbing due to the profile of the characters, the dynamics it establishes and the television and social prejudices that the series challenges. The stalker is not a femme fatale who evokes a sexuality that leads to perdition, a cliché so often used when addressing this topic. The dynamic between a woman as a predator and a man as a victim shakes our mental schema.
It is not difficult to imagine that, if they heard a man like Donny complaining about the harassment of a woman, many would begin to listen to him with the same skepticism as the police officer. And, with an infectious laugh, desperation in her gaze and the look of a wounded animal, Martha activates empathy, even when her actions and her phrases deviate to the sexual, the criminal and the desperate to the minimum.
My stuffed reindeer, which is what Martha calls him, helps Gadd address his personal demons, not only as a tool to better understand his stalker but also himself. He speaks of the opportunism of the artist, obsessed with obtaining new stories and inspirations at any price. Of the costs of the pursuit of fame. The way we become wreckage of ourselves when we are vulnerable. How the toxicity of others infiltrates under our skin until the version we see of ourselves in the mirror prevents us from reacting.
The series is a challenging work, structured with an intelligence that increases its rawness, which will possibly force more than one viewer to confront personal ghosts: it has a nuanced knowledge of sexual harassment and violence and the depths of humanity. In its final stretch it goes too far by descending into hell, when the search for roundness in the plots leads to a hyperbolic treatment of experiences with a real basis. Luckily, it doesn’t spoil the whole thing: a psychological thriller of sick interactions and with a lot to say.
