Spoilers ahead for the finale of “Half Man”
The first “Half Man” script actor Jamie Bell read was its final episode. Immediately, he was invested in the series created by Richard Gadd and started to read Gadd’s scripts in chronological order.
“I was so surprised to read, in Episode 1, this very mild, meek and innocent young man, who obviously had some issues and was obviously very guarded but had his whole life ahead of him. This collision with this other person, Ruben, affected his life forever, and he never quite got over it,” Bell said. “There’s no way that either one of them could exist without the other. They are life force for the other person: they are oxygen, they are fuel, they are water. They cannot sustain themselves without the other person, so it only made sense that if one of them was going to die, they would both die.”
“Half Man” plays out between two timelines, one that follows the relationship between Niall (Bell) and Ruben (Gadd) from adolescence and another that unfolds during Niall’s wedding day. There is always tension in the wedding timeline, especially when Ruben unexpectedly arrives. By the final episode of the series that tension comes to a head, ending in a barn with Niall’s corpse as Ruben slowly dies beside the step brother he once loved and has murdered.
“Fundamentally, they can’t live together. They almost can’t coexist. So something had to give; it was inevitable. Even if it wasn’t my intention [for both of them to die] at the start, I would have always circled back to that point,” Gadd told TheWrap. “Once I’d landed on that [ending], it felt right in terms of the whole nature of the piece.”
It’s an appropriately bleak ending for a bleak series. At the beginning of “Half Man,” young Niall (played by Mitchell Robertson) is shown to be a smart yet meek young man with a promising future ahead of him, and young Ruben (Stuart Campbell) is a reckless delinquent. Once their mothers move in together, both men forever change. Niall learns to be more confident, and Ruben finds an unlikely friend in his new brother. But as their relationship progresses, it quickly sours into codependence. Adding to the curdling is Niall’s own denial and self-loathing over his sexuality, a whirlpool of shame that leads to Ruben brutally physically assaulting Niall’s love interest, Alby (played by Bilal Hasna and Charlie de Melo).
As Niall and Ruben get older, they change. A prison sentence forces Ruben to get his life together as Niall drowns in self-harm sparked by his hidden sexuality. But no matter how great or how terrible their lives are, Niall and Ruben remain linked, bound by some unseen cosmic force.
Though Gadd was clear about wanting his series to end with Niall and Ruben’s deaths, he was less willing to talk about what that ending means.
“I never write with the intention of wanting people to take any certain thing. I do think a problem with a lot of TV and film — I guess art in general — is it’s too clear in its intentions. As a result, it can make viewers feel talked down to,” Gadd said. “Ultimately, it’s a creative endeavor for people to take whatever they need out of it … That’s more powerful than me declaring what [the ending] is.”
Gadd may not be eager to talk about the meaning behind the “Half Man” finale, but his co-stars have thoughts.
“There is a real beautiful sadness to it,” Robertson told TheWrap, noting that he was “almost glad” that Niall was out of his misery. “They both were because, by the end of it, it gets so destructive.”
“Without Ruben, I don’t know what [Niall’s] life would be because he draws all of his meaning from Ruben. Even at the wedding — even though he’s visualized a life where he is honest, truthful and happy with someone he loves and will allow himself to love and be loved by — when Ruben shows up, he needs his permission,” Bell said. “In a way, there’s no other ending to this. There is only destruction.”
For Bell, the finale of “Half Man” speaks to why Gadd’s work is so compelling.
“Richard’s really good at giving voice to the parts of humanity or ourselves that we absolutely do not want anyone to see,” Bell said. “[‘Half Man’] reminded me of my bedroom at home as a kid and the pictures that were on the wall, just these really very private personal things that he somehow manages to bring to the surface … Hopefully, we could maybe reach into people as well and make them go to their own places.”
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