That series established Gadd either as a daring writer prepared to show his vulnerability while mining the gloomier recesses of the human psyche for material… or as an emotional exhibitionist seriously lacking boundaries. Whichsoever, he won three Emmys and a Golden Globe, delivered a sensational, disturbing global hit for Netflix, and got labelled as a go-to guy for traumatic telly.
Gadd’s drama could lay a persuasive claim to being about love – specifically, men’s capacity for it and their inability to express it. I cannot stress enough that this does not make it date night material. In fact, Half Man is not soothing viewing by any measure. If you’re looking for something more emollient with which to salve a bruising day, might I suggest… The Pitt?
Like a crocodile, prehistoric and patient, it waits, biding its time until its next strike. This is never very far away in what amounts to nearly six hours of television. In episode 2, in which the mild-mannered, shame-filled Niall (Mitchell Robertson, then Jamie Bell) goes to university, Ruben goes, well, full-ragey, as they say in Scotland.
As Ruben wreaks havoc, Bell’s Niall wearily wears his accumulating trauma like an old coat – heavy, shapeless, impossible to discard - and seems perpetually braced for a impact, conflict, a hurricane.
Sometimes, Half Man feels like an essay, encouraging a ‘reading’ as much as a viewing. Sometimes, it feels like an exorcism - messy, intense and not entirely within the control of even the person conducting it.
This tension is evident in the show’s more overtly symbolic moments. A classroom scene that ends with Stuart McQuarrie’s teacher assigning Romeo and Juliet is followed by a nocturnal encounter that echoes the play’s famous balcony scene, albeit in a far more unsettling register, with Ruben’s dad beseeching his son for contact outside Niall’s bedroom window.
And here’s the rub: Half Man is half-baked. Compared to Baby Reindeer - a piece of theatre stress-tested at the Edinburgh Festival before years of development at a top-drawer production company turned it into telly - of course it is. And Half Man is half-baked partly because Gadd is still learning his craft. Prior to Baby Reindeer, he’d only written a few episodes of other people’s shows, notably Sex Education. By contrast, when Adolescence blew up on Netflix, writer Jack Thorne had more than 20 series under his belt.
All that said, there is a lot to admire about Half Man. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot to love. That’s PTSD TV for you.
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