Summary

Stephen King praised Baby Reindeer as "one of the best things" he'd ever seen on TV.
Baby Reindeer had similarities to King's Misery, with shared psychological themes.
Critics and viewers also loved Baby Reindeer, giving it a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Legendary author Stephen King loves nothing more than sharing his opinions about the movies and TV shows he watches, and boy, does he get through a lot of viewing. Any director would be honored to have "the master of horror" fall in love with their project, but one Netflix series won King's heart so much that he was glad that his spine-chilling novel, Misery, came out years before the drama began, or people would have thought he stole the entire concept.

Although no introduction is needed, Stephen King has been captivating readers since his first novel, Carrie, which was published over 50 years ago in 1974. Since then, his place in the world as a fantastic writer has been well and truly established. From The Shining, IT, and The Green Mile, King has seen many of his novels getting the adaptation treatment. Nowadays, it's almost a challenge to keep track of how many of his books are hitting the big (and small) screen, but it only goes to show what a massive impact King has on pop culture, and it looks like it won't be slowing down anytime soon. But in the meantime, King loved a Netflix stalker show so much that he not only did his usual thing of posting about it on social media, but he also wrote an essay on how much he enjoyed it.

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By Rachael Fiddis

Stephen King Called Baby Reindeer “One of the Best Things I Have Ever Seen”

a bartender looking at the direction of the bar entrance in the series baby reindeer-1

In an essay for The Times, Stephen King revealed that he thought Netflix's Baby Reindeer series was “one of the best things” he’d ever seen on television. So much so, in fact, that he was relieved that his iconic novel, Misery, was published in 1987 and not after Richard Gadd's 2024 award-winning series, as there were so many similarities between it and his book that people would have assumed he had stolen Gadd's idea. "My first thought was to thank God my novel came first, or people would assume I’d stolen it from Richard Gadd, who wrote and produced the seven-episode series and also stars in it."

“So, like 13.3 million other Netflix subscribers, I tried it and found myself sucked in, unable to look away,”

One of King’s most disturbing novels, Misery, which was later turned into an Oscar-winning film starring Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes and James Caan as Paul Sheldon, shares quite a lot of similarities with Baby Reindeer. Not only does Martha share the same physiological disorder as Annie regarding false beliefs about someone being in love with her and becoming dangerously obsessed, but the characters also share narcissistic tendencies like a sense of self-importance and entitlement, along with a lack of empathy for others.

Previously, in an interview with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation earlier this year, Jessica Gunning, who portrayed Martha in Baby Reindeer, said that she was inspired by Kathy Bates's performance as Annie Wilkes in the 1990 film Misery, and based Wilkes as a reference point for her role so it's certainly a very good reason why King loved the Netflix series so much. It's not only King who loved Baby Reindeer, as on Rotten Tomatoes, critics and viewers praised the series for its raw and emotional storytelling as well as its honest reflection of complex human experiences, giving the show a very healthy 99% rating.