In Half Man Richard Gadd Spectacularly Illustrates Themes That Adolescence and Euphoria Only Dreamed Of Showing Well

 

After two episodes of Half Man Richard Gadd's exceptional follow-up to Baby Reindeer on HBO I was reminded of Truffaut's old standby that the best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie – or in this case another TV show. That logic doesn't hold up given the schedule of the filming of the shows involved but the principle is the same.

Watching the first two episodes I finally understood why I found two shows that have been critically acclaimed in the last few years lacking, if not overrated. The first is Stephen Graham's Adolescence of which I may well have been the only person on Earth who didn't think it was a masterpiece; the second is Euphoria which I've never liked at all and indeed many critics are having second and third thoughts on as it enters its final season.

My biggest problem with Adolescence was not that it wasn't a technical masterpiece or that the performances were not extraordinary: it was the way so many people heaped praise on Graham and his cast for their bravery in dealing with subjects such as incels and violence among our young men today. I made the argument that at their core, there was nothing involving Jamie and everything that happened that I hadn't seen on shows such as Law & Order and Homicide in the 1990s and argued whether if it would have been given the same reception if the same storyline hadn't played out on SVU which it very well might have. I conceded it was brave to deal with the subject matter but aside from the camerawork there was nothing revelatory about Jamie's story and that because we saw it entirely from the perspective of him, it basically took the focus away from the victim and was trying to make us feel empathy with a murderer.  I realize I am in the minority on the subject but I could never escape the idea that all of the camerawork was pushing up a story that could have been told in a TV movie and that every award show was rewarding the effort made rather than the quality.

With Euphoria I believe I am on firmer ground. Sam Levinson is theoretically dealing with serious subjects that regard teenage life today but he does so with such over the top stylistic touches and shock value that he barely bothers with a coherent storyline. And considering that a large part of the reviews have dropped now that the characters have all graduated and are now adults – though emotionally there even less mature then they were then – I really do wonder if much of the reason for this is the exploitation of all these characters. I'm not sure, for the record, if the reviewers even now see the hypocrisy: in recent episode's its clear the reviewers are trying to make us feel some kind of empathy with Cal a man who committed statutory rape and is  now a registered sex offender  because he spent his life trying to recapture his youth in high school. Considering how much of that happened in the #MeToo era I really do think those critics who are trying to have sympathy for them have lost the moral thread of their own vision.

What does this have to do with Half Man? Well Richard Gadd's new limited series deals with the relationship of Niall and Rueben two young men who are half brothers and have known each other since childhood. Much of the story involves flashbacks between them and when they were in high school together and how their relationship became so toxic that it affected both of them in ways that neither have ever been able to recover from. The series opens with Ruben confronted Niall at the latter's wedding after an incredible absence and the two begin to start beating each other up, reluctantly and it very quickly takes a sexual undertone that clearly both repulses and attracts both men, though they can't explain why.

In adulthood Ruben and Niall are played by Gadd and Jamie Bell. As children they are played by Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell.  In all four leads Gadd, who as with Baby Reindeer wrote and produced this series, has does a masterful job in casting. In Baby Reindeer his character seemed never comfortable in his own skin and was questioning his sexuality. As Reuben his character is incredibly bulked up but that same discomfort is present. Jamie Bell first came to American audiences attention for masterfully playing Billy Elliot in 2000 and unlike most child actors bell has played aged into a better actor, starring in such films as Flags of Our Fathers, Defiance and Snowpiercer, playing Abraham Woodhull in the AMC drama Turn, Bernie Taupin in Rocketman. In all his character you see a man who is frail and can be pushed it over but has a toughness in him that his characters themselves may not be aware of.

Robertson and Campbell so eerily resemble the young versions of their adult counterparts that watching them I could see some of the mannerism that Gadd and Bell has adults. Young Rueben and Niall are clearly posers in their own ways, Niall is an incredibly brutal young man who has already been in juvenile detention twice, the second time for supposedly biting a young man's nose off. He has a great capacity for violence, no respect for order and every time he's onscreen you genuinely fear for the lives of those around him. Niall by contrast is the kind of child who's been bullied his entire life: we see a horrible example of it in our introduction, much of it done in accusations both of his being effeminate and much of it directed to the fact that his mother is engaged in a sexual relationship with Rueben's. This part takes place at the turn of the last century in one of those rural English town where even the hint of being a lesbian was the kind of thing that led to beatings. As Gadd illustrated so well in Baby Reindeer that kind of thinking has not gone out of style in Britan even now.

Watching so much of the first two episodes it was clear Gadd was dealing with everything Adolescence and Euphoria have  in their runs – gender bullying, homophobia, toxic masculinity, the divide between generations, even the kind of abuse a parent can give a child without meaning it. So why are those two shows regarded as all-time greats and the reviews for Half Man are nowhere nearly as enthusiastic. To be sure many critics do like the show and its already shown that it will be contending for Emmys like those above hut they've all been measured with even the most enthusiastic calling it 'a queasy masterpiece."

I think, in large part, it's because while Adolescence never showed the horrible actions of Jamie, only the consequences and Euphoria is so focused on shocking people you become numb to it Half Man doesn't flinch from showing just how toxic this relationship is and how bad the behavior can be. Consider a scene in the pilot when Reuben has brought a girl back to home to shag. Reuben and Niall share a room (something neither likes) and when the two of them start having sex Niall pretends to be asleep but keeps sneaking peeks. Both Reuben and the girl know he's watching but they pretend to catch him and ask him if he likes what he saw, mentioning the girl but implying about Niall's sexuality. Eventually the girl begins to have sex with Niall with Rueben basically stroking his arm and given encouraging remarks every step of the way, right up until he climaxes.

There have been far more overt and shocking sex scenes in the history of HBO to be sure (this can't top what happens in Westeros) but in Half Man Gadd never gives us even a hint of this being anything but what it is, no stylistic overkill, no shock value. We're just meant to look at this kind of thing and what it implies. There's nothing obviously exploitive about it, most of the scene is focused on Young Niall's face during it. And none of the principles feel the least bit bad about in the aftermath; its in a sense a bonding moment between Reuben and Niall. It’s the viewer who is made to question their sensibilities in a way that all of the shots of penises and overt nudity in Euphoria never really did and it might make the viewer question their sensibilities in a way many sex scenes on cable do not.

Nor is this the only time that Gadd makes us question ourselves. In an early scene Rueben's mother tries to bond with Young Niall by tickling him in a way that makes everybody uncomfortable except her. We're told that Niall used to like it when he was younger and because we know Gadd far too well, our thoughts do go to molestation even if no one else does. Gadd has not yet told us if that is the case (at least not in the first two episodes) but its more unsettling then so much of what we saw in either of the show's I listed because there's no hiding from it.  

It's not until Niall reaches university that he realizes the truth about himself, and its something he's been denying. Niall has always been terminally shy and lonely for reasons he can't quantify to himself and it's not until his first week in the dorms it becomes clear when he encounters a young man named Albie who senses 'he's a bit of a performer himself'. By that point Niall has wet himself in public and in desperation calls Rueben for companionship.

Rueben immediately becomes the flat mate from hell, adamantly flirting and dating the less attractive dorm mate of Niall's before dumping her, then engaging in drugs and a bad trip with another. After destroying the kitchen Niall finally confronts his feelings for Albie which is far more difficult then even he wants to admit. When he tries to come out of the closet Reuben is so belligerent that he nearly beats him up in a restaurant and he retreats. When Albie confronts Rueben, his reaction is shocking even as it predictable: he beats Albie within an inch of his life. He feels no remorse for it as he walks away.

What's all the more stunning is that by the time we get to the wedding in the present Niall has overcome everything and is actually planning to marry Albie. At that moment Rueben shows up terrifying everybody except Rueben's mother who we know already has done much to excuse his behavior as a child and will do so again as an adult. She is the one who asks him to Niall's wedding, fully aware of everything that has happened – and the worst is yet to come.

Gadd went out of his way to make the viewer question a lot about themselves in Baby Reindeer and it's clear with Half Man he seems determined to take it even further. Technically this show doesn't fall under Truffaut's critique: Half Man was actually greenlit just before Baby Reindeer became the critical and audience hit it was in 2024 and Gadd was working on it well before Adolescence debuted in the spring of 2025. I can't say for sure if this piece was a criticism of Euphoria which was in the midst of a long gap between the season but every time I watch a scene in this high school I keep thinking the kids at Euphoria High would have lasted a day. I grant you these scenes take place in the eighties instead of the present, but the principles the same watching Rueben and Niall stride into their school with the strut of the alpha males with almost every student looking at them with a mixture of admiration and terror, I got the impression that the two of them could eat Nate and Cassie whole, vomit them up and then eat them again. They'd look at the kids there and say: "Don't talk to us. Don't look at us, and don't you think about  engaging in ponderous voiceover narration trying to say what we're like, you wankers!"

In the first two episodes we've seen very little of Gadd and Bell compared to Robertson and Campbell but its stunning seeing Gadd compared to who he was in Baby Reindeer. In that show his character was very much the victim of violence and a sexual predator and now he's clearly become someone who violence is second nature. It's terrifying what he can do in just a few gestures or a dead-eyed stare. Bell shows someone who for all his growth and change is clearly capable of being reduced to a puddle when his brother shows up. In the leadup to his wedding he's clearly utterly terrified about what should be the happiest day of his life and we are just afraid.

Robertson and Campbell, like Jessica Gunning when Gadd cast her in Baby Reindeer, are virtual unknowns to American audiences but watching them both I see the stardom that Owen Cooper more than demonstrated in Adolescence last year. Robertson from the moment we meet him as Young Rueben oozes danger every moment he's onscreen and when the violence explodes its somehow even worse than you anticipate. Campbell as Young Niall is equally astonishing a character whose spent his entire childhood afraid, even if he doesn't know why, and now has to deal with a physical manifestation of all that he fears and loves in the same person.

Richard Gadd is becoming one of the most extraordinary voices in television in a very short time. What's more remarkable is that even though he stars, produces and writes every episode of his projects and has played the lead in all of them, they seem to be the opposite of vanity projects. They seem incredibly personal to him in a way I rarely associate with even the best of television these days.  I suspect he was closer to Niall then Rueben growing up but the way he writes both of them you get the feeling he knows both of them all-too-well and just as in Baby Reindeer he doesn't judge the way the viewer has the tendency to do.

Half Man is running during the same period as the final season of Euphoria and both will conclude at roughly the same point. Half Man is no more made for teenagers then Euphoria was, yet I can't help but think there would be value if the same young people were to watch this show, either as an alternative or to compare it.  The subject matter in both shows is similar but in Half Man the message is rawer and with even fewer filters. Yet I suspect many of the same people who worship the love story of Rue and Jules would find common ground with the saga of Niall and Rueben. And particularly since we've just seen a wedding on Euphoria that ended in utter horror and blood, I'd say they're more than ready to see one with far less style and glamor, but that has the potential to end just as badly for the married couple. I know which couple I care about more watching and I suspect many viewers will feel the same.

My score: 4.75 stars.