Russell T Davies is the most recent high-profile TV business determine to criticize Netflix for permitting real-life Baby Reindeer characters to be recognized on-line.
In an interview with The Times, the Doctor Who author stated the BBC would have been “much stricter” with editorial compliance processes had it proven Richard Gadd’s hit stalker sequence.
Davies, who has intensive expertise working with BBC compliance executives on Doctor Who, stated: “Compliance and editorial policy drives us mad here but I sleep at night.”
Since Baby Reindeer premiered final month, Gadd’s alleged stalker, often known as Martha within the sequence, has been recognized as Fiona Harvey. Others have been wrongly accused amid rampant on-line hypothesis.
Benjamin King, Netflix UK’s senior public coverage director, stated on Wednesday that the streamer and producer Clerkenwell Films took “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story.”
He added: “Ultimately, it’s clearly very troublesome to manage what viewers do, notably in a world the place every thing is amplified by social media.
“I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with a world in which we decided it was better that Richard was silenced and not allowed to tell the story.”
Richard Osman, the previous TV producer and author of the soon-to-be-adapted-on-Netflix Thursday Murder Club books, stated Baby Reindeer could be the “patient zero” of Netflix compliance.
“It’s an interesting case of what happens when you suddenly have an enormous hit on your hands. If there is even the slightest crack in the foundations of that hit, it will open into a chasm,” he stated on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast.
“All of the money that’s spent on compliance and aftercare and all of those things is just in case. This is the absolute classic example of just in case.”
Baby Reindeer launched on Netflix with little fanfare however has exploded on the streamer, amassing practically 54M views since debuting on April 11. It has been Netflix’s high English-language sequence for 3 consecutive weeks.