Trust us on this one: Baby Reindeer on Netflix may sound like it’s going to be something cute, but it really, really isn’t. Based on Richard Gadd’s hit one-man show, it’s a tale of a suffocating, life-wrecking obsession that Empire Magazine says is “brave, moving an often disturbing”… while it’s rooted in comedy, “the tears you shed won’t be tears of joy or laughter.”
The show appeared with very little fanfare but has instantly staked a claim to being among the best Netflix shows – it’s proven to be an instant hit, and at the time of writing is sitting on a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.
If your tastes tend towards darker kinds of tales, here are three more dramas on Netflix to keep you gripped once you’ve watched Baby Reindeer.
Anthracite
We’re going to make this a cautious recommendation because Anthracite isn’t for everyone: as Decider puts it, the drama show “features a quirky main character who seems to be living in a goofier universe than everyone else around her, who seem to be living in a standard psychological thriller.” The French show begins with the aftermath of a mass suicide, and then shoots forward 30 years to a kidnapping. The kidnappee is the father of web sleuth Ida, who sets out to find him. Imagine True Detective: Night Country with a bit more sunshine and a similar level of strangeness.
Ripley
This is another tale of tracking someone down, this time a vagabond son whose wealthy father hires the down-on-his-luck grifter Tom Ripley in order to find him. It’s a remake or reimagining of Anthony Minghella’s film The Talented Mr Ripley, once again adapting the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name, and critics agree that it’s beautifully set up and shot. NPR says it’s “a meticulously built piece of filmmaking that references classic noir and Hitchcock as well as Italian cinema greats, and just looking at it shot by shot is a profound pleasure” and The Mary Sue says that “it is beautiful, twisted, and exactly what I wanted for another look into Tom Ripley, the most talented con man of all.”
The Tourist
Everybody loves The Tourist: now in its second season, the show is “edgy, brutal and laugh-out-loud funny,” says Collider, and it’s effectively a Jason Bourne movie with laughs as well as action. According to the San Jose Mercury News, “while The Tourist samples from the same trough as Fargo and even, at times, Pulp Fiction, it’s still a hog-heaven meal all to its own thanks in large part to [Jamie] Dornan and [Danielle] Macdonald.” It’s all very silly, says FT.com, but enjoyably so: “think too hard about The Tourist and it all starts to fall apart… though the comic interludes and Dornan and Macdonald’s charisma easily make up for the lapses into preposterousness.”
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