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The last few years have been absolutely mind-blowing for Richard Gadd. 2024 saw the release of the hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer, catapulting Gadd to global stardom virtually overnight.

What followed was record-breaking success and a tumultuous legal case involving the alleged inspiration for Martha (Jessica Gunning), Fiona Harvey. Two years later, he returns to TV with Half Man, his first fully fictional series launching on HBO Max and BBC iPlayer.

If you thought Baby Reindeer was uncomfortable to watch (especially episode 4), Half Man makes it look like child's play. The series follows brothers Niall (Jamie Bell) and Ruben (Gadd) through 30 years of their lives, exploring why their relationship is so toxic in Ruben's hands.

Where I've repeatedly binged Baby Reindeer since it first released — Gunning's performance and Gadd's script are just too captivating not to relive — I don't think I could ever stream Half Man again in my life. In short, it dredges up the worst of social masculinity in the most ruthlessly vulnerable of ways.

Despite being an exceptional series, I still feel it will linger in Baby Reindeer's shadow, largely because of how Gadd handles his first completely fictitious subject matter.

• How to watch Half Man online and for free – from anywhere

Half Man is a brutal evisceration of the worst kind of toxic masculinity

Before we get to the negatives, let's explore how Gadd has made vomit-churning evil into remarkable television. Half Man is a no-holds-barred look at the effects of excused toxic masculinity, with a lack of repercussions pivotal to understanding how reality is reflected in what we're seeing.

While meek Niall is our focal point across the six episodes, brutish Ruben is the one the story really sits with. We first meet him as a troubled teen in the 1980s, freshly out of juvenile detention and home to a mother who chalks his violent outbursts down to him being "unwell."

He quickly controls Niall with the most disturbing mental mind games I've ever seen portrayed on television, indoctrinating every part of his sexual, platonic, school and family life. This continues to get worse as Niall attends university, before their adult lives disperse and convene back together like crashing waves out at sea.

For a woman or vulnerable person, Ruben is a very real, living nightmare thrust into the faces of those who refuse to acknowledge the abominable behaviour of not all men, but some.

He's the one we fear while we're walking down the street, exercising at the gym or trying to enjoy a night out with our friends. It's almost no wonder why I don't want to see Half Man again — to an extent, many of us live it.

The more severe end of the violence scale is handled incredibly well, and I hope it will prompt some Adolescence-style dialogue and change. Gadd has such a shrewd knack for taking the dregs of global society and turning them into grotesquely real television, even if it's not always palatable.

It's Gadd's commitment to warts-and-all storytelling that will undoubtedly make Half Man one of the standout TV shows of 2026. No matter what he represents to us, no matter what we already think we know, we're metaphorically punched in the gut until we can no longer bear to look.

So why is Baby Reindeer the "better" show then?

Jamie Bell as Niall and Richard Gadd as Ruben. (Image credit: HBO)

Let me start by saying that Baby Reindeer and Half Man are two entirely different concepts, but it's the comparison that viewers are bound to make (and frankly, already are).

If we're really nitpicking, I think there's room for improvement in the structure of the story — and my best guess is that this is largely down to confidence. With Baby Reindeer, Gadd was using events from his actual life to craft something that he'd lived, beginning, middle, and end. Half Man has no bearing on reality, and thus is a storytelling shot in the dark.

This naturally leaves a greater room for error, which I think is displayed in what we're not seeing. The creative choice to time jump between episodes is, for the most part, incredibly effective, but it means that a lot of detail is unaccounted for. One of Niall's most significant romantic relationships is solely left to the imagination, as are many of the family unit's most significant milestones.

On top of this, Gadd is the weakest link in the show's otherwise strong ensemble performance. I realize I've spent the entire first half of this review relaying the importance of Ruben as a character, but we really absorb these effects of this through Niall.

Young Ruben (Stuart Campbell) is pumped up on machismo and Lynx, spouting absolute misogynistic and homophobic nonsense through a thick Scottish brogue. Gadd's version uses his normal voice, which is jarring even if it is an intentional plot point. Rather than feeling like two halves of a whole, our Rubens are connected by a string too faint to make out.

Campbell and Mitchell Robertson (who plays Young Niall) are our standout stars in Half Man. Their version of the fraught brotherhood hits the hardest, is the most emotionally explicit, and is the most exploitative in its manipulation. Emmys and BAFTAs all round, if I had my way.

My review comes with a word of warning: stream Half Man with caution. It probably ticks every trigger warning in existence, along with an alarmingly liberal use of the C word that US viewers will likely be annoyed by. But consumed correctly, Half Man could easily be 2026's TV moment of change.

Richard Gadd arrives on HBO Max with Half Man, a twisted tale of two brothers intertwined for all the wrong reasons. But is it on par with Baby Reindeer?

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(Image credit: Rebecca Conway)