Baby Reindeer‘s Richard Gadd is taking his Emmy Award-winning talents to a new streamer—and a story that, at least on the surface, is not directly based on his own life. The creator and star of the controversial and deeply personal Netflix series has a new project coming to HBO, titled Half Man (formerly Lions). Per The Hollywood Reporter, Gadd will write, executive produce, and star, alongside Jamie Bell (All Of Us Strangers). The series, which is set to begin production in Scotland in 2025, will also air on the BBC in the U.K. and Ireland.
Half Man sounds kind of like My Brilliant Friend with two male leads. “When Niall’s (Bell) estranged ‘brother’ Ruben (Gadd) shows up at his wedding, it leads to an explosion of violence that catapults us back through their lives,” the show’s official description reads. “Spanning almost forty years from the 1980s to the present day, this ambitious series will cover the highs and lows of the brothers’ relationship, from them meeting as teenagers to their falling out as adults — with all the good, bad, terrible, funny, angry, and challenging moments along the way. It will capture the wild energy of a changing city—a changing world, even—and try to get to the bottom of the difficult question: What does it mean to be a man?”
On the Baby Reindeer front, Gadd still has some legal challenges ahead. Back in June, Fiona Harvey—the alleged real-life inspiration for Baby Reindeer‘s stalker character, Martha—sued Netflix for $170 million in a defamation lawsuit that is still ongoing. In September, a judge refused the streamer’s early attempts to get it thrown out of court. The case is currently set to go to trial May 2025. That didn’t stop Netflix from inking a major first-look deal with Gadd the same month, however. Despite the fact that Half Man landed at HBO, we can expect more stories from the multi-hyphenate on the platform in the future.
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