How much do we care about the truth these days? On the surface the answer is: a lot. People denounce “fake news”, sneer at conspiracy theorists; parse trial documents and judgments; mine politicians’ motives, finances, pasts. Inquiries are now a central pillar of our national entertainment: which clown did what, when.
And yet – is it just me, or, for all this intense obsession and policing, doesn’t there seem to be far less truth about?
It’s not just that lying is more prevalent: it’s that lying seems to be perfectly acceptable; mainstream.
In some – many – cases it is, in fact, desirable. It is, in short, an industry.
Take an example: Netflix and Baby Reindeer. It’s one of the channel’s most popular shows, up there with The Queen’s Gambit and Squid Game.
We’re told it’s a “true story” – the show’s main selling point – because right now, in our age of easy stories, self-obsession and promotion, memoir sells.
But it isn’t a true story.
Last Thursday there was an interview with Baby Reindeer’s central villain.
Fiona Harvey is 58, a qualified Scottish lawyer.
In the show she is portrayed as a foamingly insane stalker, Martha, a woman who, it’s said, harassed the show’s hero (Richard Gadd) for six years and sent him 41,000 emails. She’s shown sexually assaulting him, attacking his girlfriend, screaming out at his stand-up shows and, finally, being given nine months in prison.
Except, she claims, none of this happened. She’s never been – point of fact – to prison, and says she never assaulted his girlfriend, never smashed up a bar.
“I’m not a stalker. I’ve got no injunctions,” she said. “He is lying and they (Netflix) are lying.” She knew him for “two or three months, maximum”.
I’m gripped by it: What is the truth? Do we believe this strange, eye-rolling, twitching, plump woman? The furrowed brow and the abrupt, unvarnished manner reminded me of Susan Boyle, the unknown Scottish singer who in 2008 shot to overnight fame on Britain’s Got Talent. But if Harvey hasn’t been to prison – and she says she hasn’t – isn’t it Gadd who’s definitely lying? Martha’s sentencing was the show’s grand finale! If he made that up, why aren’t people hanging him and Netflix out to dry? Because they should.
In the past any writer caught making stuff up – or, as the press put it, not respecting the “sacred act” of memoir – was given a full public execution.
In 2006 James Frey, a former crack addict, had to grovel on national television in front of Oprah Winfrey when it was discovered he’d made up some of his book and lied to her. I immediately thought of him when I watched Baby Reindeer: it was the same narcotic narrative, extreme events, unreliable first person – and the tease: “this is all true”. But it wasn’t.
Frey became a pariah: a byword for carelessness, venality and arrogance – simply “retailing” his personal life to the nearest bidder. Back then, lying could still kill a career; now it simply ignites it.
Why the change?
You see it with royal conspiracy theories: people just letting their fantasies run away with them, no matter who’s on the other end – big traffic. You see it with politicians: now constantly making stuff up, even the ones we believe to be straight.
We seem to have built a world for ourselves in which fakery is uppermost; where the person who can lie convincingly, or create something incredible, plastic, diverting, is the most revered. Netflix, of course, doesn’t give a stuff about a vulnerable nobody from Scotland. All of this is great for it. It doesn’t care – incredibly – about libel laws, our citizens’ welfare, our cohesion as a society.
Watch any of its sloppy programs – sorry, its “great storytelling” – and you will be swept into an ugly vortex of subpar true-crime reporting, clickbaity dramas, comedy horror or shonky, lying, The Crown-style rubbish. This dross is passed off as cutting-edge cultural fare. “People love to click on stories about us,” an executive once smugly said. “Netflix has great SEO (search engine optimisation).”
In short: as long as you watch it, we don’t care.
As a TV critic, I now roll my eyes at Netflix’s hollow “success” stories. I just think: what horrible mugging, murder, coke-filled raging lunacy am I going to watch next? What sickly, twee romance?
What unsheathed, erect, unwelcome penis is going to fill my screen, without warning? That is another boundary that’s recently been crossed: in the final episode of A Man in Full, a mediocre adaptation of a second-tier novel by Tom Wolfe, the viewer is presented with a naked erection. What is happening? You’re not normally even allowed that in cinemas.
Why have we let a company pour this damaging, deceitful trash into our society? One of Netflix’s policy advisers told the British parliament last week it took “every precaution” to disguise people in the show. But that’s not true. You could find out everything about Fiona Harvey and her previous life by searching a mere few snippets from Baby Reindeer. What protection was there for her?
What protection, for that matter, was there for Gadd, who wrote an incredible, gripping script but is now, thanks to Netflix’s failure to remove five simple words – “This is a true story” – looking like the new James Frey? None. And we just sit by.
I am #TeamFiona; I hope she sues Netflix for defamation, as she has said she will. I hope the fire this turns on Netflix will force it to make stuff that’s less glib and fake, more honest and true.
The Sunday Times
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