This is what I find quite troubling.
She’s so seriously mentally unwell that no one will believe anything she says - what if the cafe part really didn’t happen? I have no doubt she did stalk him, she’s as good as admitted to it and that in itself is simply awful, as is the language she uses to talk about minorities, but how much of what was portrayed in BR was fiction and included for dramatic effect?
I think that topic of BR is so important but I feel like it should have been made as a factual documentary really. I really can’t decide how I feel about RG’s motives. It’s all very complex
This is my increasing feeling too. We don't know where the line between fiction and reality actually is.
When I first watched BR, I was horrified and appalled at what Richard Gadd had been through. Felt hugely sympathetic to him even though it was clear he'd not behaved well himself at times. I took it at face value that he'd been on the receiving end of some really intimidating stalking.
But given that it was a blatant lie they'd made Martha 'unrecognisable', inevitably we start to wonder about other things. Was the real Martha just an oddball (most pubs have one), someone with extremist and unpopular views, who RG saw as potential 'material'. An easy, socially isolated target - because he knew that people would read her social media and think it was entirely possible she could do all the stuff shown in the programme.
Did she actually stalk him relentlessly as we've seen, mistaking his kindness for something more, and did he actively encourage her? (whether through self destructive impulses after what had happened to him previously, or because he thought it would be good material, having found out about her past - one thing we do know is that she had stalked a former employer, but that was late 90s/ early 2000s, some time before the events of BR). Was her stalking at or near the level that's been portrayed or something far more mundane? Just going to the pub when he was working, turning up and his gigs etc and researching him obsessively online rather than following him to his home and gaining entry, contacting his parents, attacking his previous and current partners, making threats to his parents?
This sounds as though I'm making excuses for her - I'm not. Based on the available facts and her FB feed, she is clearly a bigot, doesn't seem to be a very nice person and has a history of stalking. If she did most or all the stuff in BR, then that's appalling, but how much of it is true and how much exaggerated for dramatic effect?
I agree this was probably better either as a documentary, or 'inspired by true events' kind of thing - making it clear that some or most of it was fiction.
I had no sympathy
