Baby Reindeer cut an eighth episode to spend more time with Martha

“When we were developing it, there was the note that kept coming in about the show being too dark,” Gadd said in Australia (via Variety). “You need to give the audience a respite from it all.” There is some logic to this, at least from an audience enjoyment perspective, but if your goal is to create an unrelenting atmosphere of surveillance, claustrophobia, and terror, it probably isn’t going to work out, as Gadd found. But not before the creator made significant progress developing an extra episode to achieve that goal, which would have found Donny retreating from London to spend time playing soccer with his father, portrayed by Mark Lewis Jones. 

However, Gadd says he felt the absence of Martha hurt the show’s overall tone more than it helped, undercutting the simmering tension that the first episodes in the series established. “I felt, in a lot of ways, the sooner you get back to her the better,” Gadd reflected during the conversation, and explained that he ultimately pushed back against the directive from Netflix. That said, some parts of the episode did end up being repurposed into others. The cut episode’s would-have-been-climactic scene of Martha invading Donny’s kitchen was altered to open the series’ third episode. Gadd said he was disappointed that audiences missed out on more scenes with Jones, but on the plus side, the decision seems to only add more credence to the stance that Baby Reindeer is ultimately a work of fiction.