Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, TV and Film, Crime, True Crime
Joe Harker
Netflix viewers have been collectively crapping themselves over the new series Baby Reindeer, which is based on the real-life story of leading star and creator, Richard Gadd.
His character in the show, Donny Dunn, endures a years-long stalking ordeal which is disturbingly similar to the one the Baby Reindeer creator and leading star went through.
Gadd spent six years being stalked and harassed by a woman who in the series is named Martha (Jessica Gunning) before the police finally intervened.
Over the course of years, Gadd received 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters from the stalker.
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With that in mind, it's no wonder that Netflix viewers have been left 'speechless' at Baby Reindeer when they've put it on.
Those who've been able to wrap their heads around the real life events which ended up being adapted into the series have also been spotting certain details that have cropped up.
Taking to social media, The Independent's chief culture reporter Jacob Stolworthy pointed out that the 'random series of numbers like spam' in the stalker's email address were a reference to another TV show.
He pointed out that the sequence '4815162342' that appears in Martha's email address is actually 'the cursed numbers from Lost'.
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In Lost, the numbers represent a formula which is meant to predict the end of the world, at least according to Google as I haven't actually seen Lost and have neither the time nor inclination to try and wrap my head around some of the show's incomprehensible lore.
By the way, if you're wondering why Baby Reindeer is called Baby Reindeer, it's the nickname that Martha develops for Donny based on a favourite childhood toy of hers.
In the series, she said: "I had this wee cuddly toy when I was young. Went with me everywhere. Earliest memory I have, I think, was Christmas time.
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"This old photo of me, sitting with this paper hat on my head and this baby reindeer beside me. Anyway, this reindeer was this cuddly, fluffy thing. It had big lips, huge eyes, and the cutest wee bum.
"Well, you are the spit of that reindeer. The same nose, same eyes, same cute wee bum. It means so much to me. You… You mean so much to me."
While the Netflix series is based on a true story it's not clear whether the real stalker actually developed that nickname for her victim.
Meanwhile, if you need a bit of a mental detox from all of that, then please enjoy these pictures of an actual baby reindeer.
Baby Reindeer is available to stream now on Netflix.