Richard Gadd’s Half Man, a follow-up to the raw and real Baby Reindeer, for which he won three Emmy Awards, is equal parts difficult to watch and impossible to look away from. The six-part British series tells of the toxic relationship between two men, Niall and Ruben, played with fierce fragility by Jamie Bell and Gadd.

Told over 30 years, with Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell playing the younger versions of Niall and Ruben, the series explores complex issues of male violence, addiction and co-dependence.

In the beginning

Speaking from London over a video call, Gadd talks about how Half Man came to be. “It was around 2019. There were conversations around male repression and violence and something sparked in me. I remember I was on the tube. I came up with this idea of two men in a barn, with nothing explained or contextualised. One of them is topless, the other is not. One is clearly bigger, burlier and tougher, and they have this conversation. Then you cut back to their lives, and you see them soak up all the prejudices, shame and societal injustices that make them who they are.”

That image was all the 37-year-old Scottish writer and comic needed. “I never set out to answer questions, to explore themes, in an ‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this’, or ‘I’m going to say this about this.’ All I need is that kick forwards to do something — two broken men in the present, and the two young adults in the past, who show you the context for why these adults are behaving in the way that they are. That was all I needed to see the project through.”

Whose story

While the series is mostly told from Niall’s perspective, Ruben is a presence throughout. That is why, Gadd says, it is hard to say whose story it is. “Niall sees Ruben as this godlike presence. Ruben’s got the idolatry, the main character syndrome, which is a common phrase these days,” Gadd says with a laugh.

The story, Gadd says, is about two brothers, who though not related by blood, have a toxic pull between them. “Things are never straightforward, never black and white. Ruben and Niall have an unexplainable bond. The fact that it’s not clear whose story it is shows the tussle they have in trying to be one up on each other. I can never say it is this or that person’s story. It’s both of their stories, and in a lot of ways, neither of their stories.”

Title deed

Though people have asked him what the Half Man in the title stands for, Gadd says he does not like to say what things mean. “I know why it’s called Half Man. A lot of people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, I think it’s called Half Man because of this or that’. I quite like that people take different things from the title. I don’t want to be prescriptive and say this is what I meant. People can take several things from the title.”

Richard Gadd in a scene from ‘Half Man’
\| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Ruben even says it at one point in the series, Gadd says. “Niall and Ruben also have things that the other lacks. Celeste (played by Philippine Velge) has a line where she says one of them needs a head, the other needs a body. Together they are whole and empty apart. I’m proud of the title. Funny little fact: for a long period of time, I couldn’t quite land on what was right. Half Man came to me quite late in the day, and the second it dropped into me, I thought, ‘this feels right to me now’.”

Write stuff

Writing Half Man, Gadd says, was not easy. “The time pressure was tricky. All I remember is the project was a big, weighty thing. You’re coming up against pressure, expectation and some real stiff deadlines. I felt I worked day and night in order to get Half Man as good as I possibly could.”

The structure of Half Man created particular challenges, says Gadd. “Once I decided on these leaps forward in time, with each episode set a few years apart, it became difficult. I realised that having to return to each episode and recontextualise what the characters had been going through in the intervening years was tough. Exposition is dull and you have to find interesting ways to fill in the gaps between the episodes.”

Episode 3 is set in 1993 and there is a 14-year leap to 2008 in episode 4. “So much happens in those 14 years. Ruben goes to prison. He betters himself, comes out of prison and gets a job. Meanwhile, things do not work out for Niall. He’s been in a psychiatric hospital. He hasn’t dealt with the threat of Ruben’s violence well, and these are all hard things to squeeze in. The whole structure of trying to write an almost asymmetrical mosaic structure was hard.”

What lies beneath

One of the threads that run through Half Man is repression and the suffering it causes. “I’ve experienced repression and it can be quite toxic. If you’re not able to live your true form or within your own happiness or the identity you feel comfortable in, it can lead to extraordinary unhappiness at the very least. In the case of Niall and Ruben, their repression goes on for so long, and they’re so violent towards themselves as well as each other that it leads to some destructive and damaging behaviours in their lives.”

On the sets of ‘Half Man’
\| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

The levels of bruising physical and psychological violence in Half Man make for uncomfortable viewing. “Niall and Ruben are violent people. Ruben’s extremely physically violent, and they both enact a certain psychological violence. I wanted to give a sense of context to the struggle both these characters were going through, which made them behave in these incredibly destructive ways.”

Repression is an interesting subject to explore, Gadd comments. “A lot of society’s ills, certainly over here, come from a lack of acceptance that makes people think they can’t speak about things that happen to them, or they can’t speak about the way they are, they can’t speak about hard, painful feelings they have, but ultimately, speaking and being true to yourself is the key to freedom.”

That is what Niall and Ruben struggle with most of all, Gadd says. “They struggle with being true to themselves, being true to one another, showing love for themselves, and showing love for one another, and that in a lot of ways is the key to their destruction.”

Half Man is currently streaming on Lionsgate Play

Published - July 21, 2026 05:59 pm IST