The first episode of Half Man is now available to watch on BBC iPlayer, and it sets us off on a 30-year journey with Richard Gadd’s Ruben and Jamie Bell’s Niall.
The characters are predominantly played in the first episode by younger actors Stuart Campbell and Mitchell Robertson, with Gadd and Bell’s versions only appearing to bookend the episode, at the end of the 30 years timeline we are set to track.
Given this closed structure, it seems as though Half Man is set to be a one and done series. Now, while speaking with us exclusively for our video interview series The Radio Times Writers’ Room, in which we get to know what makes screenwriters tick, creator Gadd has confirmed that this is indeed the case, even if it wasn’t always.
When it was suggested to Gadd that it feels as though the story is wrapped up in the show’s final episode, and asked whether it ever occurred to him to make it a multiple season project, he said: “It did at one stage, I think it crossed my mind.”
Gadd continued: “I did have an idea for it. But I think you’ve always got to do what’s right for the project. And I think the best way of telling this story was the way that it ended, in the way that it does end in Half Man, and I think that that mattered more than laying the groundwork for a potential future season that may or may not happen.
“So I felt like an idea of how it would end came to me, an idea of structuring it throughout came to me, that felt a lot more satisfying than hedging my bets in the future. It just suddenly occurred to me, while I was writing it, that it should exist as its own piece of work and not something that can kind of extend and extend.”
In his chat for The Radio Times Writers’ Room, Gadd also discussed his work on his previous project, breakout Netflix hit Baby Reindeer.
Gadd said of the show’s rapturous reception, and the amount of people that watched it: “It was kind of exposing, because so many people were just watching it.
“And in a way, walking down the street, and just by nature of suddenly being famous, suddenly being recognised, I just suddenly felt like one day people weren’t paying attention to me, and the next day they were. And that is an innately destabilising experience.”
Half Man will continue on BBC iPlayer at 6am on Friday 1 May.
Richard Gadd’s full interview for The Radio Times Writers’ Room is available to watch on Radio Times and on YouTube now.
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