Summary
Half Man is already striking, brilliant, and difficult to watch, proving that Richard Gadd isn’t interested in doing things by halves after the success of Baby Reindeer.
How do you follow Baby Reindeer? This must have been the question knocking around Richard Gadd’s head when coming up with Half Man, since, at least if Episode 1 is anything to go by, it’s the kind of thing that can only be conceived as a way to outdo a seismically popular original work. I can’t say that if Half Man were Gadd’s debut project, it would have been as genuinely challenging to watch; it’s a work of extremes that builds on the style honed in the forge of Baby Reindeer’s out-there depiction of abuse, masculinity, and trauma.
It’s extremely good, though. That’s obvious immediately, as soon as an opening scene starring Gadd and Jamie Bell as the adult versions of brothers Ruben Pallister and Niall Kennedy. At that point, we have no real idea what’s going on between them, but we can feel in the atmosphere that it’s something deeply awful. The rest of the premiere winds back in time to the two as youngsters, played by Stuart Campbell and Mitchell Robinson, respectively, to explore quite how awful, and it’s way worse than even I was expecting.
As teenagers in the ‘80s, Ruben and Niall were chalk and cheese. The former was a troubled, violent youth from a young offender’s institution, transferred to Niall’s class and indeed his bedroom due to their family connection. The latter, meanwhile, was a meek victim nursing what it quickly becomes obvious is an internalised confusion about and fear of his homosexuality. Ruben adopts a kind of protective, mentoring big brother role, but filters it through the lens of a violent psychopath, reworking scenes of outrageous violence, bullying, and trauma as selfless good deeds.
When Ruben is attacking Niall’s school bullies, this is a bit easier to square. But when Ruben is helping his girlfriend to essentially rape Niall as “reward” for helping him to disingenuously pass an exam, we’re immediately in much murkier territory. This scene goes on for ages and is deeply uncomfortable to watch, not least because there’s an undeniably homoerotic contour to Niall and Ruben’s relationship that is challenging to unpack. Is this a confused boy trying to figure out his own sexuality through the prism of the only consistent male figure in his life? Or is it foreshadowing something else, perhaps even darker, coming down the line?
The genius of Half Man Episode 1 is how capably it communicates Niall’s conflicting internal headspace. He knows that Ruben is bad news, and very openly fears him, but he’s also sick of being an anxiety-stricken victim and on some level appreciates having someone looking out for him, especially someone of whom everyone else is terrified. There’s a moment of Niall and Ruben walking to and then into school in slow motion that is clearly designed to highlight the upsides of Ruben’s presence, however short-lived they may be, and it’s also careful to show some moments of vulnerability in Ruben himself. He teaches Niall how to box, reminds him that they’re family and he will be looked after as such, and in a particularly telling scene, is caught dancing by Niall and becomes visibly embarrassed.
But for the most part, this doesn’t jive especially well with the snippets we see of Ruben in the present day. From what we can gather there, he has turned up unannounced on Niall’s wedding day. His behaviour is volatile and unpredictable; he punches Niall, and then tenderly talks him through dealing with the bloodied nose he just gave him. There’s a real menace to Ruben here, but the way he ping-pongs between doing damage and then trying to repair the damage he caused as if it never happened stretches back to what we’re beginning to understand is a lifelong pattern. Something awful happened between these two; perhaps many things. And we’re going to have to see them all first-hand. I’m not sure whether I can’t wait or can’t look.
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