James Walton

Danny Dyer’s new C4 programme is deeply odd

Plus: Mammoth is a sitcom that’s off to an unusually accomplished start

One of the many random scenes featured in Channel 4's Danny Dyer: How to be a Man 
issue 20 April 2024

Who do you think said the following on TV this week: ‘I love being around gay men – seeing a group of men expressing themselves the way they do is beautiful’? The answer, perhaps unexpectedly, is Danny Dyer, whose admittedly convincing schtick as the world’s most Cockney bloke was applied to the question of contemporary masculinity in a new programme for Channel 4. The result was a deeply odd mix of the touching, the illuminating, the silly, the thought-provoking, the cheerfully comic, the pensive and the completely confusing.

At first, it looked as if the cheerfully comic would predominate. Danny Dyer: How to Be a Man opened with Danny showing us around his man cave and breezily announcing that ‘Channel 4 bunged me a few quid to travel the country talking to geezers’. Before long, though, he set his brow to troubled and wondered if all the current talk of ‘toxic masculinity’ means ‘there’s now a war on men’.

As unoriginal premises go, this is a pretty sturdy one

His investigations began near his ‘old gaff’ in east London where he met his brother Tony who, to their father’s disgust, had preferred dolls to football. (‘Never in a million years would I have had the balls to pick up a doll,’ said Danny, admiringly.) Next came Ed, an online influencer who operates out of his parents’ garage in Essex and who obligingly provided some unhinged misogyny aimed at teenage boys.

To his credit, Danny didn’t waste much time on Ed, wondering only if he really believes what he spouts for money. He did worry, however, that voices like this are filling a void where more considered discussions of masculinity ought to be. After all, there seems a surprising lack of concern, even curiosity, about what might lie behind the statistics on male suicide and untreated mental illness.

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