The creator of Baby Reindeer is prancing from Netflix to HBO. Richard Gadd, the writer, creator, and star of Netflix’s breakout hit Baby Reindeer, is taking his talents to one of the streamer’s major rivals, with HBO and the BBC set to coproduce his next project, Lions.
Lions will be a six-episode series following an epic and complicated relationship between two men, Niall and Ruben. Per the press release, Ruben shows up at his estranged ‘brother’ Niall’s wedding, leading to “an explosion of violence that catapults us back through their lives.” The series will span almost four decades, from the 1980s to present day, covering the peaks and valleys of their relationship from adolescence to adulthood.
“It will capture the wild energy of a changing city—a changing world, even—and try to get to the bottom of the difficult question…What does it mean to be a man?” reads the log line.
Gadd will serve as executive producer on Lions alongside alongside Tally Garner and Morven Reid for Mam Tor Productions, Gaynor Holmes for the BBC, and Gavin Smith for BBC Scotland. Alexandra Brodski and Eshref Reybrouck are on tap to direct the series.
Gadd’s first series, Baby Reindeer, was an unexpected breakout hit for Netflix this spring after its April premiere. Based on a one-man play he debuted at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Baby Reindeer is a seven-episode miniseries inspired by events that allegedly transpired in Gadd’s actual life. Gadd stars as Donny, an aspiring comedian and pub worker who is harassed and stalked by pub patron Martha (Jessica Gunning). The series is gaining major Emmy buzz for Gadd, Gunning, and in the limited-series category; it already took home the breakthrough-limited-series award at the first Gotham TV Awards this spring.
At the same time, Baby Reindeer has stirred up a fair amount of controversy. Earlier this month, Fiona Harvey—a Scottish Lawyer who has identified herself as the woman on whom Gunning’s Martha is based—sued Netflix for $170 million, alleging defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and violations of her right of publicity. At a UK Parliament hearing, Netflix policy chief Benjamin King said that the streamer and producers took “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story.” In a statement to VF, a rep for Netflix previously said, “We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.”
For his part, Gadd has refused to talk about the basis of his characters, maintaining that the real-life version of Martha and the fictional versions are substantially different. He has repeatedly chastised viewers for attempting to find the real people who inspired the fictional characters that populate Baby Reindeer. “I think it does a disservice to the art,” he said of the public’s obsession with revealing their identities, in an interview with Vanity Fair last month. “I’ve spoken out publicly against it and said that I wanted to stop. I think that did have an impact.”
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