Digested week: Kim Kardashian’s corset, dated insults – and a fuss at the Garrick | Emma Brockes
Monday Credit for the success of the TV show Baby Reindeer is largely owed to one woman, Jessica Gunning, who rescues Richard Gadd’s baggy, self-absorbed script with her brilliant performance as Martha, Gadd’s stalker. (When Gunning disappears, mid-series, we are effectively left in a room with a man doing bad standup). For the last week or so, coverage of the show’s success – it’s No 1 on Netflix in the UK and No 4 in the US – has rubbed shoulders with commentary about the ethics of the race to unearth the real people on whom the seven-part drama is based. That search resulted, this week, in the spectacle of Piers Morgan publicising an interview on his YouTube channel with the “real” Martha, a woman who, if the show is to be believed, is a deeply unwell individual. The proper thing would have been not to watch. I did watch, however, for the first five minutes, to see how the supposed reality held up against the show – predictably, as it turned out. Where Gunning …
