SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details about Half Man.
Richard Gadd went from an unhinged stalker and the effects of sexual abuse trauma in Baby Reindeer to examining the intersection of toxic masculinity and male loneliness in his latest venture: Half Man.
Gadd plays Ruben to Jamie Bell’s Niall. As “brothers from another lover”, they share a fiercely unbreakable bond. Gadd, who wrote and created the series, puts the two characters on different sides of the same coin. Niall is the quiet, mild-mannered one who lacks confidence, while Ruben is an unpredictable dormant volcano that gets violent at the drop of a dime.
Although polar opposites, the two remain inseparable and codependent as they go through an unhinged upbringing (the younger versions of the brothers are portrayed incredibly well by Stuart Campbell and Mitchell Robertson). After a huge fracture separates them, Niall gets an unexpected visit from his creepy, estranged brother, Ruben, on the day of his wedding.
Half Man jumps back and forth from Niall’s wedding day to the brothers’ upbringing until it comes to an abrupt end that is oddly satisfying.
It’s not until Niall is away at college that the journey begins to spiral into the depths of Gadd’s psyche as he explores a prototype of a man rooted in anger and insecure self-righteousness. On the flip side, Gadd uses the brothers as a vessel for the dangers of aspirational male toxicity and the aggressive suppression of emotions.
Gadd fits slivers of humor into the cracks of Half Man’s intensity, but other than that, there is little to no levity in this emotionally heavy journey.
Uneasy and unhinged, Gadd elevates his interrogation of tough subjects in Half Man but handles it with a thoughtful hand. However, the show gets so dark that I defied the laws of binge-watching, only able to handle one episode at a time to save my sanity.
At first glance, it is assumed that the more violent brother would be the “villain”, but Gadd blurs the lines of the complicated and problematic relationship between the brothers. It’s dizzyingly frustrating to watch these brothers make horrible life choices.
As their relationship deepens, Niall fights against his queerness more and more. So much that he ends up with a woman — and that doesn’t end well.
Niall’s college friend Albie (Bilal Hasna) serves as a proxy for an empathetic outsider with common sense. At one point, Albie refers to Ruben and Niall as “two halves of the same man”. In another scene, Niall tells Albie that he and Ruben are basically the same person.
Albie responds, “You’re the same person the way Jekyll and Hyde are the same person.” It’s a little on the nose, but it’s the perfect encapsulation of Half Man.
Dark, extreme, bold, and honest seem to be Gadd’s brand. With Half Man, he created another emotionally layered and profound piece of TV that will leave people shocked, curious, and… a little bummed.
