‘Half Man’ Review: Richard Gadd’s Dark, Violent Follow-Up to ‘Baby Reindeer’

The fraught, slippery notion of masculinity is pushed to its limits in the new series from Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd. Here, he twists the tonal and generic logic of that earlier show into something far harsher, more abrasive, and—at times—monotonous: a bruising portrait centered on the relationship between two very different “half-brothers,” whose lives are bound together by constant tension that spills over onto everyone around them. This time Gadd plays the more overtly aggressive figure. Ruben is a bully in much the same way Martha was a stalker in Baby Reindeer, while the protagonist here is Niall (Jamie Bell), an insecure, bewildered man who responds to the violence inflicted on him by spiraling into self-destruction, worsening not only their bond but the tangled trajectories of both their lives.

Unlike Baby Reindeer, this new series lacks subtlety and ambiguity. It leans heavily into violence and feels closer to that show’s most brutal stretches (episode four comes to mind), with a hazy, uneasy notion of sexuality at its core. The dynamic between these two “half-brothers” (they’re not, in fact, related) becomes a staging ground for competing models of masculinity: Ruben embodies a more traditional “alpha” archetype, while Niall shifts from victimhood into a kind of passive-aggressive retaliation, echoing the role Gadd himself played before. The problem with Half Man is that everything here is more blunt, more on-the-nose; even its attempts at shocking the viewer come off as simplistic or overly familiar.

Still, the series has a raw intensity that makes it almost addictive. There’s so much energy, volatility, tension, anguish, and cruelty coursing through it that looking away becomes difficult. It plays like a slow-motion train wreck, its impact foreshadowed from the opening flash-forward—a scene that recurs at the beginning and end of episodes from shifting temporal vantage points. But once the full story is revealed and the details of both lives are laid bare, it becomes clear that what the series has to say was evident from the outset. Or perhaps that its central theme—the tortured confrontation with masculinity—has already been explored ad nauseam in countless stories about male toxicity.

It all begins at Niall’s wedding, in adulthood—an event that will soon be revealed as the story’s endpoint. Yet instead of being with his partner, the timid, frightened Niall is in a barn with the angry, volatile Ruben. Niall wears a traditional Scottish outfit; Ruben is shirtless, fists wrapped like a boxer about to enter the ring. Niall’s expression says everything. What follows—Ruben beating him savagely—confirms it. The series then sets out to trace how and why things reached this breaking point, which, in truth, is not the end of anything.

From there, we jump back to the late 1980s and meet a younger Niall (played by Mitchell Robertson), a textbook shy, anxious teenager subjected to constant bullying by classmates and even scorn from a mocking teacher. Things get worse when a new student arrives: Ruben (a frightening Stuart Campbell in his younger years). The look of dread on Niall’s face says it all—things are about to get much worse.

Ruben is the son from a previous relationship of Maura (Marianne McIvor), now partnered with Lori (Neve McIntosh), Niall’s mother. Their relationship is kept secret; unwilling to reveal they are a lesbian couple, they present themselves publicly as friends sharing a home. “I’m your brother from another lover,” Ruben says when he reenters Niall’s life after spending time in juvenile detention for one of his many violent outbursts. Niall has already suffered at his hands; now, forced to share a bedroom, he will suffer even more.

And yet, their bond is not entirely devoid of connection. In a way reminiscent of Fight Club, Ruben becomes the missing half of Niall—defending him from bullies at school (often by brutally disfiguring them), while Niall helps him pass exams. Ruben is charismatic and self-assured; Niall is withdrawn and timid. But coexistence is fraught: Ruben abuses and humiliates him, calling him “Bambi” or “faggot,” orchestrating a degrading sexual initiation, and pulling him into a world of hyper-performative masculinity. Niall, meanwhile, is coming to terms with the fact that he is attracted to men—Ruben included—but acknowledging his homosexuality remains taboo, even to himself.

The series tracks their relationship across decades, marked by shocking violence (a devastating moment closes episode two), prison stints, reunions, ruptures, and unexpected turns in both their lives. Their dynamic is persistently tense—borderline terrifying for Niall—but not without fleeting moments of reconnection and even tenderness. The series’ central maneuver lies in gradually revealing that cruelty does not belong to Ruben alone; both men are implicated. The toxic bond they forge—driven by the compulsion to assert a dominant version of manhood—ultimately destroys them both. Each return to the wedding reframes the conflict, shifting our sense of who is victim and who is aggressor.

At its core, the series is about these oppositions, these competing ways of “being a man,” reiterated again and again with only slight variations. Narrative turns introduce its most unsettling question: not just which of the two is worse, but how corrosive the macho culture surrounding them truly is—how it traps them in patterns that make even a modestly peaceful life impossible. Childhood trauma, emotional inarticulacy, impulsive behavior, physical aggression as default language, and self-sabotage become their coping mechanisms. And while Half Man grabs hold of the viewer, there comes a point when its relentless insistence becomes exhausting, hammering the same note over and over.

In some respects it recalls Adolescence, another work grappling with toxic masculinity, and it situates itself within the so-called “manosphere.” But the series struggles to break free from its own suffocating atmosphere—dark not just thematically but visually—and its pervasive cruelty, which extends to supporting characters as well. Within this infernal landscape, Gadd and Bell move between raw physicality and heightened theatricality in a way that evokes mid-century American stage and screen acting—think Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. At times, especially in Gadd’s case, the extended, carefully constructed dialogue feels overly labored. These two codependent “half-men” ultimately stand as twin embodiments of masculinity’s most destructive extremes—two parallel paths toward self-annihilation for a generation raised on the trauma of pretending to be something they are not, and living accordingly.