Already being described as one of the year’s most talked-about television dramas, Half Man is officially streaming in the UK. Co-produced by the BBC and HBO, the six-part series comes from Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd, who also stars in the show alongside BAFTA-winning actor Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot, Filth, All of Us Strangers).
Filmed and set in Glasgow, Half Man follows estranged “brothers” Ruben and Niall across three decades of their lives, exploring brotherhood, repression, violence and the fragile intensity of male relationships. The series opens in 2018 on Niall’s wedding day, when Ruben unexpectedly appears and follows him into a barn away from the guests. The tense reunion quickly erupts into shocking violence, setting up the central mystery of what happened between them. The story then jumps back to 1987, tracing the beginning of Ruben and Niall’s bond as children who become inseparable through grief and circumstance.
According to the official synopsis, Ruben is fierce and loyal while Niall is quieter and more mild-mannered, but the relationship between them becomes increasingly complicated as the years pass. Each episode moves through a different point in their lives, including freshers’ week in 1989 and a devastating prison dilemma in 1993, slowly building a portrait of two men unable to fully escape one another.
Speaking about the series, Gadd explained that he wanted to explore masculinity in a deeper and more emotionally honest way than television often allows, using Ruben and Niall to ask “what it means to be a man in this ever-changing world.” He also discussed the show’s darker moments, explaining that violence felt essential to the story he was trying to tell and to understanding where repression can lead.
“I think in order to explore the topic of male repression and violence you need to show violence. Ultimately, whether we like to admit it or not, we live in a violent culture and world.”
Alongside Gadd and Bell, the cast includes Neve McIntosh, Marianne McIvor, Amy Manson, Stuart McQuarrie and Scot Greenan, with Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell playing the younger versions of Niall and Ruben. That younger casting is key to Half Man’s structure, as the series moves back through the decades to show how their intense childhood bond formed long before everything began to fracture.
New episodes of Half Man arrive weekly on BBC iPlayer every Friday, beginning with episode one on 24 April. Episodes then air on BBC One the following Tuesday, starting on 28 April, with the finale landing on iPlayer on 29 May and airing on BBC One on 2 June.
For CultureCues, Half Man already feels like one of the year’s strongest British dramas. It can be brutal and emotionally exhausting, with moments that sit in a deeply unsettling place, but it also feels incredibly human. Richard Gadd and Jamie Bell are doing astonishing work here, and as a Scot, there is something genuinely exciting about seeing a Glasgow-set drama of this scale land on screen.
Half Man episode one is streaming now on BBC iPlayer.
Nikki Murray is a UK-based writer, screenwriter and founder & editor of CultureCues, covering film, television, music and pop culture. Her work focuses on storytelling and the moments shaping modern entertainment.