The Baby (2022)
There’s a time in many women’s lives where summers packed with weddings transform into years filled with babies. Even if you don’t opt for a heteronormative path, donning a long white veil and marching towards 2.5 children, those choices surround you. Money and weekends that were once devoted to music festivals are swallowed by hen do’s, meeting pals in pram-friendly spaces and swiping away targeted Instagram ads for nursing bras.
That is the place we first encounter The Baby’s heroine Natasha (Michelle de Swarte), a hotshot chef who has two friends Mags (Shvorne Marks) and Rita (Isy Suttie) over for a poker night, hoping to recapture some of the magic of the good old days. Unfortunately Mags’s childcare has fallen through, and an adorable baby crashes the party. All of a sudden the cigarette burning between Natasha’s fingers has an air of child endangerment, and swear words hang awkwardly in the air. Natasha’s ambivalence towards babies is challenged further when Rita informs her she’s three months along and Natasha is unclear as to whether this is meant as good news, for which she is labelled a “massive arsehole”. For although Natasha is doing what she’s always done, the rules have changed, and not having a baby doesn’t mean babies aren’t somehow thrust upon you.
De Swarte plays Natasha as a sort of Alice down the rabbit hole, in an uncanny and unsettling world, which she performs with an easy charisma and natural comic timing. The show, even at its most extreme, has no greater strength than her deadpanning her way through scenes, whether bemused or horrified. Even as Natasha’s past wounds are unveiled, they are nuanced and delicately put, never suggesting that not wanting a child is a trauma response.
The Baby, as a satirical horror-comedy, takes the pressure of motherhood to the extreme, and Natasha, while at an Airbnb on the coast, has a baby literally drop out of the sky and into her arms. From then on, and despite a soaring body count, Natasha has to relinquish her autonomy in service of this unexpected bundle of joy, and keep the baby alive. It operates in contrast to the gentle sadness of a subplot where her sister desperately desires to surrender to the responsibilities and joys of motherhood, but faces a never-ending series of bureaucratic obstacles.
The horror elements of The Baby are not particularly scary but the show is certainly gory. Bodies plummet off cliffs and are impaled on spikes; nipples are bitten clean off. The most bone-chilling sequences are saved for the fifth episode, where we finally learn of the baby’s origins, ones that are particularly harrowing in light of the recent threats to women’s reproductive rights.
Where The Baby struggles is in utilising the medium of television to maximum effect. Many episodes end with cliffhangers, but until the mysteries start getting answered in the final three instalments, the show fails to build up momentum. The bodies start mounting in the first episode, and continue at a pace, but in the middle episodes even the satirical elements tread water, not moving beyond restating the lack of autonomy of a person responsible for a baby, demonic or not. The show isn’t intended as a character study across a long narrative arc, so The Baby feels like a square peg in a round hole, seeming better suited to a sub-two-hour runtime.
Despite the suboptimal format, there is plenty to take from the cutting commentary and deep well of distinct “what the fuck” expressions that de Swarte has at her disposal. Once we have established what, and why, the baby is, it’s a thrilling sprint to the end, particularly when the show introduces new questions around the nature of unconditional love. The lightly cartoonish aesthetic is also best suited to the final act, with much of the supporting cast allowed to have their characters’ angst crescendo amid the utter absurdity of the action around them. For all that the metaphor of unwanted motherhood ruining your life lacks subtlety, it’s also delightfully employed, and no more sharply than in the grand finale. Babies are a wonder, life-affirming, mesmerising beings and symbols of hope for a better future – but as The Baby reminds us, they can also be a “fucking nightmare”.
► The Baby is available to stream on Now TV.