• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 6 hours ago

At the start of a new drama premiering on HBO/HBO Max on Thursday, a muscled, tattooed criminal reunites with his younger, smaller half-brother and cruelly and suddenly punches him in the face with all his strength for no apparent reason.

The show, titled “Half Man,” then flashes back to their childhood, where the younger brother has to share a room with his half-brother, who is already a violent, unpredictable psychopath.

To say that the life of this younger brother, Niall Kennedy (played by Jamie Bell, above photo, left), is a shit show is an understatement.

When he is not getting bullied and/or violently assaulted by his own brother, Niall is being sadistically attacked by bullies at his school just about every day.

On top of all this, older half-brother Ruben (Richard Gadd, above photo, right) is confused about his own sexuality. 

While previewing Episode One on Monday, I was not quite clear whether he was gay or straight. 

Maybe the answer came later in the episode, or comes later in one of the five other episodes of this six-episode series.

But once again, about three-quarters through the first one-hour episode of “Half Man,” I bailed on a TV show before seeing the whole thing through. 

I did this just last week with the new cat cartoon “Kevin” for reasons outlined in a previous TV Blog.

I do not want this bailing on TV shows to become a habit. But for me, Episode One of “Half Man” was so relentlessly sad and depressing that, for the sake of my mental health, I could not go on. 

Or to put it another way, yesterday was a pretty nice day and I had no desire to ruin it.

I have written a number of times that much of the dramatic TV landscape today can be described as the saddest place on Earth.

And yet, the TV biz -- more often than not the streaming services -- keep churning out their sad dramas because, evidently, people watch them. Otherwise, they would not make so many of them. 

On the subject of “Half Man,” for all I know, the misery on display in Episode One might actually be reversed in later episodes through some sort of redemption storyline. But alas, I will never know this.

“Half Man” premieres Thursday, April 23, at 9 p.m. Eastern on HBO, and streaming on HBO Max.