Netflix's 'Baby Reindeer': A dark, haunting story bungles its depiction of queerness

Note: You can't really talk about this series without discussing a major revelation that occurs in episode four of its seven-episode season. So be warned: Spoilers ahead.

There's a reason that the first scene in the first episode of Baby Reindeer, now streaming on Netflix, plays like it's a classic setup to a joke: Woman walks into a bar.

Creator and star Richard Gadd is setting our expectations exactly where he wants them set; he needs us to think that the story he'll tell us over the next seven episodes will conform to the narrative contours of dark comedy.

He's already tipped us off that the comedy in question will be dark indeed, via a framing device that opens the show: We see his character Donny Dunn filing a police report that he's being stalked by a woman named Martha