ITV’s newest hit show Until I Kill You has a bizarre connection to Netflix’s Baby Reindeer.
The two have similarities, with Baby Reindeer focused on star and creator Richard Gadd’s harrowing experience of being stalked by a woman.
Until I Kill You meanwhile is based on a woman’s real-life horrifying brush with a killer, as it tells the story of Delia Balmer, a woman who survived the Scalp Hunter serial killer.
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Balmer survived the Scalp Hunter, known as John Sweeney, despite him tying her to a bed for several days.
The show about her ordeal surviving his awful abuse has a real-life connection to Baby Reindeer in a famous pub that the two share as core parts of their story.
Not only are Baby Reindeer and Until I Kill You both set in the same part of London, but they both to a certain extent revolve around the same pub.
Delia Balmer, portrayed in the show by Anna Maxwell Martin, dated John Sweeney.
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She would recall their meeting in a documentary focused on the real life story of how they met, where she said: “It was a bank holiday Monday, I went to The Hawley Arms pub, they had a good jukebox there."
For those who know Richard Gadd’s real-life story well, that may ring a bell.
Whilst the name of the pub was changed in Baby Reindeer, Gadd met the woman he claims is the real-life Martha in The Hawley Arms, a London pub where he worked.
This was revealed in court documents filed by Gadd in response to Fiona Harvey, the ‘real-life Martha’, suing Netflix for $170 million for defamation.
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Within the documents filed by Gadd, he says: “In 2014, I met Harvey at the pub where I worked at the time, the Hawley Arms. I noticed that Harvey looked distressed and offered her a cup of tea on the house.
“On noticing each other’s accents, we engaged in what I took at that time to be a friendly conversation and discussed our common Scottish heritage.”
He goes on to describe how she then allegedly stalked him for three years.
The pub, which Amy Winehouse would famously frequent, once caught fire and had to be shut for months but survives to this day.
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There is very clearly something in the air at the boozer.
Until I Kill You is available to watch on ITV X now. Baby Reindeer is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: ITV, Netflix, Amy Winehouse, TV and Film, TV
Michael Slavin