Warning: This piece contains spoilers for Half Man

Richard Gadd , whose semi-autobiographical 2024 series Baby Reindeer earned six Emmys and countless appearances on best of lists , roared back to television this spring with HBO’s Half Man . It’s a project he started writing in 2019, before he made Baby Reindeer .

The haunting and hypnotic story follows stepbrothers Niall (Mitchell Robertson as a teen, Jamie Bell as an adult) and Ruben (Stuart Campell as a teen, Gadd as an adult) over 30 years, as their uneasy yet unshakeable bond becomes an increasingly toxic relationship.

“ In 2019, there was a lot of discussion around male violence and male behavior.…