Half Man Review: Gadd's Bleak Baby Reindeer Follow-up
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- Richard Gadd's Half Man is his follow-up to Baby Reindeer on Netflix, and the reviewer calls it 'the least comedic thing that has been on television in recent memory' — a 'long, slow, flat, bleak wound' with no tonal relief
- Ruben (played by Stuart Campbell in flashback) is a mindless thug whose graphic beatings become a 'visual motif' as the series progresses
- The show's self-interrogation is highlighted as its most interesting feature: Jamie Bell's character becomes a successful author who is infuriated when journalists ask whom his book is based on, which the reviewer reads as Gadd's direct response to the Baby Reindeer uproar over its real-life inspiration
- The Leftovers Season 1 and Black Mirror's Shut Up and Dance are cited as tonal relatives, with the reviewer noting The Leftovers only became a great show when it introduced irony and absurdism in later seasons
- Half Man is compared to Adolescence: 'Adolescence is a show about adolescence that feels as if it was made by men. Half Man is a show about men that feels as if it was made by adolescents'
- Performances are praised as 'exactly as intense as they need to be,' but the show is ultimately dismissed as lacking emotional subtlety — 'like it was made by a 14-year-old emo acting out to get noticed'
Why it matters: For audiences weighing whether to commit to Gadd's second Netflix series, the reviewer makes the trade-off explicit: Half Man's boldest asset is its self-interrogation about Baby Reindeer's real-life inspiration, but that concept is buried under what the critic calls near-unwatchable 'torture-pornography' that makes it impossible to root for any character across all episodes.
