Staggeringly good telly by any standards, Netflix’s ‘Baby Reindeer’ is a drama with a highly relatable sense of place. Its themes – of toxic obsession, mental illness, half-buried trauma, and, eventually, healing – play out against a recognisable backdrop of spaces that we’ve all experienced ourselves. Pubs. Bars. Clubs. Night buses. Long, gloomy walks home. The nightmarishness of the events depicted in the show is accentuated by Edinburgh and London locations too preoccupied with their own shit to take stock of one lonely man’s implosion.
The series’ creator-star Richard Gadd transplants his own one-man show from stage to screen with a level of honesty best described as ‘agonising’, determined to make ‘Baby Reindeer’ a deeply personal but also universal viewing experience that transcends tired bunny-boiling stalker clichés. Those locations play a key role in that. Here’s where to find them.
Warning: contains mild ‘Baby Reindeer’ spoilers.
The Hoppy – Meadowbank, Edinburgh
‘Baby Reindeer’s time-jumping structure is one of its great strengths: stand-up comedian Donny (a near-autobiographical version of Gadd) relives his trauma and experiences at the hands of stalker Martha (played by Jessica Gunning). The younger Donny’s fateful experiences at the Edinburgh Festival aren’t tackled until episode 3. We see him walking, wide-eyed, down the Royal Mile and through the Grassmarket, before unveiling his hit-and-miss comedy show, at a pub closer to the edge of the city. The exterior shots of that pub are The Hoppy in Meadowbank, where filming took place near the end of lockdown.
Army & Navy pub – Stoke Newington
Those gigs were actually filmed at a pub in London: Stokey’s Army & Navy. As in the show, where pissed-off regulars have their football viewing interrupted by Donny’s routine, the North London boozer is a big sports pub, also known for its live music. It’s here that Donny meets odious TV big shot, Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill), the man who will groom and abuse him.
F Cooke – Hoxton
In episode 1, Donny takes Martha for an innocent cuppa – ‘coffee funtimes’, as she puts it in one of her 41,071 emails to him – and unwittingly kick starts a stalking nightmare that will consume his life for six years. The scene was filmed at family-run pie and mash shop F Cooke in Hoxton.
The Stag’s Head – Hoxton
At one stage early in the series, a stressed-out Donny is seen walking to The Heart pub to begin a shift. IRL, the pub’s exterior belongs to The Stag’s Head in Hoxton.
The Regent’s Canal – Haggerston
Donny’s fraught late-night encounter with Martha on his way home from a disastrous date with Teri takes place along the Regent’s Canal near Haggerston Park.
Royal Vauxhall Tavern – Vauxhall
Another location you might recognise from elsewhere (potentially the terrific drama ‘All of Us Strangers’, starring Andrew Scott), the RVT appears in episode 3 when Donny goes on a date with American therapist Teri (Nava Mau), a trans woman he meets on an app. Here, coked-up, strung out by Martha’s harassment and paranoid that Teri is clocking that he’s adopted a dating persona, he spirals on the dance floor to Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’.
Shoreditch Town Hall – Shoreditch
One of four spots sourced for the show by locations agency Location Collective, Shoreditch Town Hall served a dual purpose in Baby Reindeer: as Donny’s drama school and the Edinburgh VIP club where he does coke in the toilets with Darrien.
Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club – Bethnal Green
Episode 1’s prop-heavy stand-up gig is the first time Martha gatecrashes Donny’s other life away from bartending at Camden’s The Heart pub. The scene, where she heckles him, semi-encouragingly, was filmed at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, a flamboyant, burlesque-loving venue in the East End.
Greenwich Magistrates’ Court – Greenwich
Another two-use location sourced by Locations Collective, Greenwich Magistrates’ Court doubled as the court where Martha eventually faces justice and the police station where a desperate Donny has a series of increasingly surreal interactions with a unhelpful cop played by Thomas Coombes (‘Luther: The Fallen Sun’)
Marsham Court – Victoria
As we learn in flashback, TV writer Darrien’s apartment is where Donny falls down a terrifying rabbit hole. The exteriors of the luxe flat were filmed at Marsham Court in Victoria. The art deco edifice was once home to civil servants and the odd politician. Lib Dem leader Jeremy Thorpe, played by Hugh Grant in ‘A Very English Scandal’, lived there in the 1960s.
Rivoli Ballroom, Brockley
Brockley’s legendary Rivoli Ballroom is now a film and TV star in its own right, with cameos in everything from ‘Killing Eve’ to ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’. It pops up in ‘Baby Reindeer’ in a scene that has Donny falling apart on stage before an audience of unsympathetic punters. The excruciating moment contrasts starkly with the Rivoli’s last use for a stand-up sequence... in ‘Wonka’.
The Comedy Store, Leicester Square
The legendary London comedy club is where all great comedians pass through on their way to the top, and it’s here that Donny – now ‘Donny Dunn’ – gets his redemptive gig in the final episode. It follows his now-viral meltdown in an earlier gig and brings a long-awaited moment of professional triumph. The scene, of course, was filmed at The Comedy Store itself.
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