Stage to Stream: Solo Theatre, Auteur Television, and "Baby Reindeer"

Baby Reindeer is the latest addition to the small but mighty pantheon of one-person plays turned quirky TV dramedies. While Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum (formerly, as a play, Chewing Gum Dreams) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag slowly amassed cult followings in the ensuing years after their finales, Baby Reindeer amassed 84.5 million views since its early April Netflix premiere and is officially one of Netflix’s most popular series of all time. As a theatre kid (ok, theatre adult —I have a BFA, dammit!) with a Master’s thesis on Auteur TV Comedy, it’s no surprise to anyone that this rather niche genre is a personal favourite. However, industry insights indicate that the market demand for these auteur television dramedies is low, particularly when entertainment executives are so risk averse and unlikely to gamble on low-profile IP.  But can you blame them? 

So, to what can we attribute Baby Reindeer’s success?

When the creative stars align, the audience-performer intimacy of a solo theatre piece deliciously complements the narrative intimacy of the streaming format. It’s the perfect format to tell complex, darkly comedic, and highly personal stories… but it’s not for broad audiences and it requires a high level of precision to execute successfully. For that reason, there’s an argument to be made that auteurism doesn’t belong in television. How can one artist tell their story with so many bureaucratic hoops to jump through? I generally agree with this sentiment, but, sometimes, against all odds, magic happens and you’ve got yourself a hit.

Theatre and television are two of the things I love the most, and they are as vastly different as they are intrinsically bound. In the 50s, early television was promoted as a theatrical experience. NBC even converted New York’s Theatre Centre into a full-fledged TV studio, advertising it as one big Broadway theatre premiere. Both theatre and traditional broadcast TV are temporally present and personal, existing in the here and the now. Theatre, however, is not as replicable or formulaic as television. Even in the era of prestige TV, linear police procedurals and multi-cam sitcoms are still the television industry’s bread and butter. So, when a television series like Baby Reindeer comes along the industry impulse is to figure out what worked about it and how we can make the next Baby Reindeer. 

But Baby Reindeer isn’t Law & Order or Friends, and chasing “the next big thing” will only get you a hundred more second-rate, semi-autobiographical pilot scripts by sub-par local comedians (as someone who has —regrettably— written a script like this, I feel entitled to say that.)

Queering the “Precarious (Girl) Comedy”

These auteur TV dramedies, dubbed “Precarious Girl Comedies” by Rebecca Wanzo, are characterized by an immature, down-on-her-luck, protagonist that often veers into anti-hero territory. Think Hannah Horvath (Girls), Issa Dee (Insecure), and Arrabella (I May Destroy You). Men have been at the centre of auteur TV for decades (no shade —they could never make me hate you, Larry David!!), but “Precarious Girl Comedy” centres its complex female characters. But… despite its male protagonist, Baby Reindeer seems to most comfortably fall under the scope of “Precarious Girl Comedy.” This might be due to its self-reflective nature and harrowing exploration of sexual trauma, which set it apart from the lighter tones of shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm or Louie. The queer elements of Baby Reindeer further align it with the genre. While shows like Broad City or Fleabag address sexuality in their own right, Baby Reindeer’s queer representation broadens the horizons of the “precarious (girl) comedy” into more modern and engaging territory. Of course, this is not to imply that queerness is inherently precarious or female, but more to propose a shift in the way we perceive and interpret this television genre.

Even within the aforementioned pantheon of auteur TV dramedy, nothing is formulaic. Each series is structurally and narratively unique, pulling from the source material (plays, sketch comedy, web series…) to offer something that feels entirely new, even alongside its contemporaries. 

In the end, aren’t we all just yearning for more shows that give you that gut-punch feeling? That is irreplicable.