Netflix just snapped up what should be the ‘apocalyptic’ follow-up to ‘Baby Reindeer’

Remember when Richard Gadd adapted his Edinburgh Festival Fringe-selected one-man show Baby Reindeer into a seven-episode miniseries, which Netflix would then acquire, having no way of knowing at the time that it had one of the last few years’ most sensational pieces of storytelling on its hands?

Well, it seems like that has resulted in Netflix having a Pavlovian response to “Edinburgh Fringe” because they’ve since recruited another such play for a narrative streaming adaptation, this time in the form of Weather Girl.

Per Deadline, the play, written by Brian Watkins and Julia McDermott, follows the plight of Stacey, a lustful weather girl living in California who doesn’t get paid nearly enough for her up-to-the-minute coverage of the end of the world. But one day, she makes a discovery that could correct the trajectory of our dying planet, and her life is subsequently turned upside down, shaken aggressively, set on fire, and promptly dropkicked across the nearest stadium.

Like Baby Reindeer, the Weather Girl Netflix adaptation is being developed as a limited series, although it’s not yet clear how many episodes will comprise the adaptation. That’s neither here nor there, though, because Weather Girl presents an opportunity for Netflix to demonstrate its understanding of why Baby Reindeer worked the way it did.

This is to say that Netflix needs to be prepared to greenlight unsafe storytelling while allowing the artists in the room to take control of the project. In watching Baby Reindeer, there was nary a single studio contrivance in sight; just a ragtag group of actors, writers, and directors working together to hit a very tricky target built out of trauma, culpability, violence, queer guilt, and the impossibly compassionate levity that balances it all out. And hit it they did.

Indeed, Baby Reindeer went places and came back from those places, and Weather Girl ostensibly needs to do the same. Granted, details on the adaptation are rather thin, and its subject matter beseeches a wider textual scope than Baby Reindeer, but the heart of the Weather Girl play will undoubtedly still be the largest ingredient. The fact that it’s a one-person show like Gadd’s original Baby Reindeer play — and is therefore built almost entirely on personal emotional nuances — only exacerbates this.

It’s not just Weather Girl and us viewers who would benefit, either. Netflix (and most other streaming services, for that matter) has a reputation for lackluster in-house productions that are more aptly characterized as products rather than films or television shows (Uglies and Time Cut are two recent examples that spring to mind). Therefore, every opportunity that Netflix has to indulge in brave storytelling is a chance to shed that low-brow stigma that has been haunting the streaming world for some time now. Baby Reindeer was among the mightiest results of seizing such an opportunity. Why not try again with Weather Girl?

For now, though, the Weather Girl play is still basking in the acclaim it’s found since its Edinburgh Fringe run. The play has already won several awards at the time of writing — including a Scotsman Fringe First Award, a Popcorn Writing Award, a Lustrum Award, and a LIST Award — and it’s scheduled to run at London’s Soho Theatre from March 5 to April 5 in 2025.