I’m sure you’ve heard of star-crossed lovers – two people who are bound together by the same perverse fate that will ultimately keep them apart – but what about star-crossed brothers? “My brother from another lover” is the refrain in Richard Gadd’s new six-part BBC series, Half Man, where sex and violence, love and hate, good and evil have all been etched, irrevocably, in the cosmos.
“What can I say about Niall Kennedy?” a voice booms out at a wedding. It belongs to Ruben (Richard Gadd), a bearded biker who has burst into the ceremony, his leathers creaking like a stretched belt. Niall (Jamie Bell) is his makeshift stepbrother, the son of his mother’s former partner. They grew up together – Niall a nervous boy struggling with his sexuality, Ruben a force of pure delinquent charisma – before an act of violence wrenched them asunder.
