Could Baby Reindeer change TV forever?

NOBODY saw this coming. Not Netflix, not its stars, not the public. Baby Reindeer was quietly released last month only to explode. thrilling and appalling viewers everywhere, and becoming one of the most talked about shows in years.

Some 22 million people have watched the miniseries and it has racked up 87.4 million total hours viewed, putting it light years ahead of every other show on Netflix right now. It has also been acclaimed by everyone from Stephen King ("Baby Reindeer. Holy shit, he tweeted) to Cardi B. But the resulting frenzy has also unleashed something dark that brings into question how true crime dramas will be made in the future.

This is the big break moment for its star, Richard Gadd, who was long known on the comedy circuit but was hardly a household name- as well as his co-star Jessica Gunning, who plays the disturbed Martha, and will rightly be in the spotlight come awards season. But the show has had unintended consequences.

Part of what connected so many to the story is that it's based on Gadd's real experiences of being stalked, as well as sexual abuse- even though the show blurs fact and fiction. And as a result an army of amateur internet sleuths set out to track the real stalker, as well as Gadd's abuser. Misinformation abounds. Earlier this week, the sleuths incorrectly identified who they thought was Gadd's abuser, who was then swamped by "defamatory abusive and threatening posts", forcing him to contact the police. All this, despite calls from Gadd to back off. "Please don't speculate on who any of the real-life people could be," he wrote in a hastily-released statement. "That's not the point of the show." But that hasn't put off the sleuths, nor the outlets who have been splashing interviews from Gadd's supposed stalker around online and muddying the waters further.

What does this mean for the way we watch television? Mark Stephens of law firm Howard Kennedy fears that "increasingly crime and serious wrongdoing is being treated as light entertainment. You’ve got a situation where viewers are increasingly engaging in shows as if it’s gameplay, and that’s creating a problem.”