transformed Gadd<\/a> from a largely unknown alt comic into the winner of many Emmys \u2014 the chances of a second stealth maneuver are low. It doesn\u2019t help that while Half Man has almost nothing narratively in common with Baby Reindeer, its thematic concerns are similar and the weight it presses upon the viewer is similar. The result is a six-episode series that boasts several great performances and some gripping perspective on toxic masculinity, trauma and sexual violence \u2014 yup, it\u2019s another one of those shows \u2014 but feels emotionally unrelenting for six consecutive hours.<\/p>\n\n\tFrom a distance of a few days, I can see Half Man as a melange of elements that mark the intriguing and off-putting intersection of Judd Apatow and Sam Shepard, but if you\u2019d asked me how the series was as I was watching it, my only answer would have been, \u201cIt\u2019s\u2026a lot.\u201d It\u2019s a show with much to recommend it, but it\u2019s an emotionally draining show that, in its ultimate revelations, left me with little enthusiasm for recommendation.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe series opens with Niall\u2019s jovial Scottish wedding. In a barn, Ruben is confronting Niall about\u2026something. Their conversation is evasive and threatening and pregnant with decades of secrets, some shared and some to be revealed over the next six hours. The threat of violence \u2014 sexualized violence \u2014 is in the air, and within less than five minutes, several forms of assault will be perpetrated, leading into a flashback.<\/p>\n
\n\tDecades earlier \u2014 signaled more in sountrack choices than anything else \u2014 Niall (Mitchell Robertson) is a socially awkward, oft-bullied teen, whose eyes grow wide with terror when he hears that Ruben (Stuart Campbell) is about to join his high school class. Ruben has spent two years at a juvenile detention facility, and Niall doesn\u2019t want him as a classmate. He definitely doesn\u2019t want to share a room with him, but it turns out that Ruben is moving in with Niall, because Niall\u2019s mother (Neve McIntosh, excellent) and Ruben\u2019s mother (Marianne McIvor) are close friends, locally rumored to be lovers (because they are).<\/p>\n
\n\tRuben is everything that Niall is not. He\u2019s tall, assertive and wildly charismatic. He\u2019s also dangerously out of control in ways that scare the meek Niall \u2014 who dreams of becoming a writer and is clearly coming to terms with his nascent homosexuality \u2014 but simultaneously intrigue him. Ruben takes action, whereas Niall prefers to be passive. Ruben comes with his own gravity, whereas Niall naturally recedes into the wallpaper. Will Ruben be the death of Niall, or will his outsized confidence turn out to be exactly what Niall needs to self-actualize? Will Niall help Ruben get his life in order or will he somehow destroy him?<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019d be easy to look at the characters and at the show\u2019s title and think that Niall is an embodiment of ego, Ruben an embodiment of id, and that together, these two half-men might help each other become a full man. But that\u2019s not exactly what the show\u2019s title refers to and that\u2019s not in any way what happens here.<\/p>\n
\n\tSubsequent episodes follow a similar structure, bookended with the events at Niall\u2019s wedding and filling in the gaps in their respective journeys, which don\u2019t go exactly the way you expect them to. Except that\u2026man, they go a lot of exactly the way you expect them to. The show almost immediately settles into a rhythm where you know that any time Ruben shows up, it\u2019s going to lead to shouting \u2014 SO much shouting \u2014 threats and violence, even when circumstances initially suggest otherwise.<\/p>\n
\n\tA show like this really needs to keep the viewer off-balance, never quite correctly anticipating the degree to which Niall\u2019s life is positively or negatively impacted by his \u201cbrother from another lover.\u201d In lieu of that, the story\u2019s mystery needs to be enough to keep you curious or guessing. Neither traditional narrative draw emerges here.<\/p>\n
\n\tEven when expectations are reversed, as happens occasionally in the middle of the season, it\u2019s only to amplify the next emerging threat. <\/p>\n
\n\tEven when the shuffled chronology renders cause-and-effect confusingly jumbled, Gadd\u2019s tendency to come back to traumatic sexual violence as a precursor for adult personal and sexual development, while dramatically satisfying, is psychologically unconvincing. I also found that to be the case with Baby Reindeer, where Gadd\u2019s need to give answers required that he impose a cause-and-effect in circumstances that aren\u2019t always so thoroughly connected.<\/p>\n
\n\tThough Gadd obviously wants to upend the initial good brother\/bad brother, victim\/ perpetrator, hero\/villain binaries, only the dominant narrative, rather than the attempted subversion, sticks. The bones of the story, which go back to Cain and Abel (or Jacob and Esau), are so familiar, as are the reversals, that it\u2019s hard to find anything Gadd\u2019s doing to be genuinely fresh. The best he can accomplish is execute familiar beats with earnest, heightened theatricality. There are one or two scenes in which Niall and Ruben monologue at each other that made me think of Shepard\u2019s True West or Willy Russell\u2019s Blood Brothers, and I can respect how Gadd worked with those influences, but there were very rarely moments that felt genuinely original or out of the blue in the way that so much of Baby Reindeer did. You\u2019re in a vice for six hours, with an author who lever lets you forget that he\u2019s in charge of tightening and adding pressure.<\/p>\n
\n\tGadd is terrifying, a fierce force of nature and a perpetual misadventure waiting to happen. His voice rumbles up from some place deep inside, tinged with menace and pain, and you can\u2019t stop watching or listening to him. He and Campbell, who plays the part for much of the series, convey a similar sense of uncontrollable danger, though even when the script says otherwise, Ruben never becomes anything other than feral. It\u2019s easier in Campbell\u2019s interpretation to see how Ruben could be both dangerous and appealing, harder in Gadd\u2019s interpretation to see him as anything other than a wounded animal.<\/p>\n
\n\tRobertson grounds both versions of Niall in a sad-eyed misery, with Bell stepping in and giving the character grace notes of humor that don\u2019t always seem to fit the story. I laughed out loud several times at acting choices Bell made, the rare release valve within a show that could badly use more. Baby Reindeer was hardly a laugh riot, but mortifying humor is still humor and, with episodic running times in the 30-minute range, the show had a charging, unpredictable momentum. Baby Reindeer series directors Weronika Tofilska and Josephine Bornebusch also added visual variation, while Half Man directors Alexandra Brodski and Eshref Reybrouck dig deeper and deeper into pervasive glumness that isn\u2019t allayed by two or three seconds of people in kilts festively dancing as a framing device. Half Man is largely dour and colorless, doomed from beginning to end.<\/p>\n
\n\tMore than anything, Baby Reindeer had a dose of warmth courtesy of Nava Mau\u2019s Teri, while the central love story in Half Man, which I won\u2019t spoil, is too flimsy to be sweet. The love story exists here to offer hope, but not much and not for long. And maybe that\u2019s the point \u2014 to chart a descent of two inextricably linked characters, bound together for better or worse long before the opening wedding. I can respect the lines Gadd is drawing between nature and nurture, destiny and self-determination, trauma and healing. I just can\u2019t say I found the unveiling of those truths to be especially enjoyable or revelatory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the theatrical poster for Adam McKay\u2019s Step Brothers focused on a studio portrait of the characters played…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[41073,96,41074,1636,41098,2839,41075,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-543891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-baby-reindeer","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-half-man","11":"tag-hbo","12":"tag-jamie-bell","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-richard-gadd","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}