Half Man is a breathless, brutal drama that puts the fear of Gadd into you

BBC/Mam Tor Productions/HBO/Sebastian Nevols

If Ruben Pallister - the ferocious lead in BBC One drama Half Man - was in a room with any of TV's most brutal creations, you'd back him to leave it alive.

The adult version of Ruben is played by series creator and writer Richard Gadd, who had his TV breakthrough with Netflix hit Baby Reindeer.

At times Half Man is a searing hot take on masculinity - but there is far more in Gadd's smelting pot here.

Its release comes a year after Adolescence, which posed questions about why teenager Jamie Miller became a killer, leading viewers - and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer - to question the influence of the corrosive impact of social media and misogynist influencers, on some teenage boys.

Earlier this year, Louis Theroux's Inside the Manosphere documentary offered a glimpse at what content creators are like away from young men's algorithms.

But Half Man starts long before smartphones and streaming, while the questions it poses are broader, with a focus on fear.

This article includes discussion of Half Man but does not contain major spoilers.

BBC/Mam Tor Productions/Anne Binckebanck

For Ruben, his rage bubbles and boils over into wild acts of violence - an anger too hot for authorities to handle.

Half Man waits to spell out precisely what Ruben experienced as a child, but plenty of dots can be joined as the story swings back and forth through time.

His father is a swaying shape, yelling slurs into shadows from beneath his son's bedroom window.

His mother doesn't acknowledge that Ruben is a loose cannon loaded with vast quantities of gunpowder.

And so he continues bursting his way through life as both an unstoppable force and an immovable object.

Almost everyone around him is too fearful to intervene. Even in his more civil moments, Ruben's handshakes grind knuckles and his hugs squeeze air from anyone in his grip.

He expresses his masculinity by defaulting to violence with a horrifying, flawed policy that "real men” treat women with contempt and solve problems with a switchblade.

Fear might have lit Ruben's touchpaper, but now everyone is standing too far back to stamp it out.

The horror is how increasingly familiar that feels generations after his formative years.

BBC/Mam Tor Productions/Anne Binckebanck

In this blended, blighted family, fear has a different hold on Niall, played as an adolescent by Mitchell Robertson.

In the 1980s, Niall's path is set on a lifelong collision course with Ruben, his "brother from another lover", brought to life in his younger years by Stuart Campbell.

It's a decade in which homophobia has taken a seat at many families' dinner tables.

As Niall's gaze lingers on a poster of shirtless men and his nerves skyrocket in the company of girls, he may still be under an illusion - but we aren't.

The Aids crisis is devastatingly rampant and Scotland is having its own, distinct grapple with it.

No good comes from Niall being in the closet, but he's convinced far worse would come from stepping out of it.

The journey that fear takes him on isn't a slow-motion car crash, it's a full-throttle run of joyless rides.

No one is safe from being collateral damage by the time Jamie Bell plays Niall later in life.

Time passes and society shifts, but Niall either can't see others' fear, or he's too consumed by his own to care.

BBC/Mam Tor Productions/Anne Binckebanck

Half Man fires its warning shot early: strap in, this is going to be rough.

The clatter of cutlery as an atmosphere sours over dinner. The clenching of a fist that precedes a bloodbath. The signs you learn to spot that Ruben's rage is about to ignite.

Warning lights are flashing to suggest Gadd should brace for impact as his latest story is told, as are early positive reviews.

Half Man's subject matter is consistently, exhaustingly heavy and will test many people's tolerance for on-screen violence.

But its compelling story and exceptional cast grip like a vice, with Gadd offering a fearsome false platitude from the start.

It's something Ruben menacingly tells his terrified targets.

"Don't worry. It'll be over soon."

Half Man is available on BBC iPlayer on Friday 24 April. It will air on BBC One in the UK and on HBO in the US.