Russell T Davies is the latest high-profile TV industry figure to criticize Netflix for allowing real-life Baby Reindeer characters to be identified online.
In an interview with The Times, the Doctor Who writer said the BBC would have been “much stricter” with editorial compliance processes had it shown Richard Gadd’s hit stalker series.
Davies, who has extensive experience working with BBC compliance executives on Doctor Who, said: “Compliance and editorial policy drives us mad here but I sleep at night.”
Since Baby Reindeer premiered last month, Gadd’s alleged stalker, known as Martha in the series, has been identified as Fiona Harvey. Others have been wrongly accused amid rampant online speculation.
Benjamin King, Netflix UK’s senior public policy director, said on Wednesday that the streamer and producer Clerkenwell Films took “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story.”
He added: “Ultimately, it’s obviously very difficult to control what viewers do, particularly in a world where everything is amplified by social media.
“I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with a world in which we decided it was better that Richard was silenced and not allowed to tell the story.”
Richard Osman, the former TV producer and writer of the soon-to-be-adapted-on-Netflix Thursday Murder Club books, said Baby Reindeer would be the “patient zero” of Netflix compliance.
“It’s an interesting case of what happens when you suddenly have an enormous hit on your hands. If there is even the slightest crack in the foundations of that hit, it will open into a chasm,” he said on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast.
“All of the money that’s spent on compliance and aftercare and all of those things is just in case. This is the absolute classic example of just in case.”
Baby Reindeer launched on Netflix with little fanfare but has exploded on the streamer, amassing nearly 54M views since debuting on April 11. It has been Netflix’s top English-language series for three consecutive weeks.