'Half Man' review: Grim tale of two brothers

WHAT IT'S ABOUT "Baby Reindeer" creator Richard Gadd returns with "Half Man," a six-part series about the decadeslong dysfunctional relationship between two men who grew up together because their mothers were a couple.

The series begins with a violent act on the wedding day of Niall Kennedy (Jamie Bell), as he reunites with Ruben Pallister (Gadd). It traces the evolution of their relationship throughout their tumultuous teenage and college years and beyond. Niall is shy and timid; Ruben is troubled and prone to violently lashing out.

Stuart Campbell and Mitchell Robertson play the younger versions of Ruben and Niall, respectively. The first two episodes of the Glasgow, Scotland-set series are available now on HBO Max, with the remaining four scheduled for release throughout May.

MY SAY Gadd's autobiographical "Baby Reindeer" became a Netflix sensation in 2024 because it combined some very dark themes about digital stalking with a tangible sense of humor and an honest perspective. 

You hadn't seen anything quite like it, a true nightmare of the social media age.

A viewing of the first two episodes of "Half Man" reveals a similar focus on our worst primal instincts. But it's painstakingly gut-wrenching and unceasingly grim.

Ruben crashes into Niall's life as a profoundly disruptive force. He's deeply cruel, but also confident and unafraid in a way that Niall cannot comprehend. Ruben wins over his "brother from another lover," as they both put it, by violently attacking the bully that has tormented him. When Niall goes to college, he finds himself adrift and alone. He calls Ruben, who joins him and destroys things for Niall and everyone around him.

The animating notion behind "Half Man" makes sense. Take "Jekyll and Hyde," and place it in Scotland, beginning in the 1980s, and you've pretty much got the gist of it. Ruben personifies everything Niall cannot be: his deepest, darkest and most repressed self. 

It's made with great care, with a strong sense of place, and with a real eye for what it feels like to have such a toxic person eating away at your existence. Both actors make Ruben seem impossibly larger than life, while the stars playing Niall make him seem ever smaller and more afraid. We all contain multitudes, as the saying goes, and we all have both of this in us, somewhere.

But our lives are also marked by happiness, by joy, by moments of levity and grace, by times when the clouds part and the sun shines through. The early episodes of "Half Man" have none of that. And so the experience of watching it has a sort of deadening effect as we wait for the next moment where Ruben will violently snap and we brace for the wreckage.

BOTTOM LINE Gadd remains a first-rate talent; anything he does is worth watching. But it's hard to sit through this one.