What does it really mean to be a man – and not just a geezer?
In a previous documentary he called fascist leader Oswald Mosely a ‘right melt’
What does it mean to be a man in modern Britain, with
traditional gender roles a thing of the past?
That’s the premise behind Danny Dyer’s new documentary series How to be a Man on Channel 4.
Or as the man himself says, somewhat more to the point: “Channel 4 bunged me a few quid to talk to geezers up and down the country.”
This is what Dyer does best – reducing pretty complex debates to cheeky cockney banter.
Some people might write him off as a moron, but they’d be underestimating a man who’s spent his whole life playing a part.
Remember, this is the man who cut his acting teeth with Harold Pinter and also the man who summed up the resentment of post-Brexit Britain by calling disappearing prime minister David Cameron a “tw*t” on a primetime chats how.
(“Where is he? He’s in Nice with his trotters up, where is the geezer?”)
And in a previous documentary I can’t forget how he called fascist leader Oswald Mosely a “right melt”.
This time, Dyer is tackling the thorny subject of toxic masculinity.
“Is there really a war on men? F*** knows would be my initial reaction to that,” he says at the outset.
“But there’s a lotta sh** going down and maybe a lot of men are resenting that.”
And off he goes on a bit of a random jaunt to meet stay at home dads, abused men in refuges, teenage schoolkids and a whole cast of 21st century men.
It’s quite hilarious reading the reviews of this show in the ‘liberal’ press like The Guardian and The Independent – they’re not happy that he’s delved deeply enough into the Biggest Issue of the Age.
In The Independent, reviewer Louis Chilton described Dyer as ‘our plain-spoken docent’ (I had to look that up) but admitted he struggled to understand the masculinity crisis because “I am socially bubbled in a milieu of like-minded progressives”.
(Or tw*ts, as Danny Dyer might call them.)
Back on the trail and Danny meets with Ed Matthews, a 21-year-old imbecile who once had 800,000 Instagram followers for his Andrew Tatestyle uber-male rantings.
The Guardian reviewer was upset that Dyer didn’t say enough to challenge Matthews, but to be honest he really didn’t need to.
The bloke is based in his parents’ garage, sitting around in a tracksuit spouting medievalist ideas about nonvirgin women, misandry (the opposite of misogyny) and how the oppression of young men means “you got 25-year-olds now with no beards”.
He’s just an idiot and anyone with a few brain cells can see that.
Dyer certainly could and just looked disgusted by him.
At the Gay Men’s Chorus in Brighton, Dyer had a great old time chatting with the geezers in the pub about how just talking might be the way to stop men bottling up their emotions until it leads them down the road of clinical depression.
“These fellas give me hope for the future,” said Dyer, praising their ability to express themselves through song and dance, something a man with a 30-year acting career behind him would definitely understand.
And then it’s off to a boxing club where men with mental health problems and selfesteem issues take it out on punchbags (and each other) in a very testosterone-driven way.
I’ve absolutely no idea if Dyer cracked the issue of toxic masculinity but he did show how some men were really struggling.
Are they struggling because they are men?
Or because, just like for all of us, the financial squeeze is on like never before, there’s a massive deficit of hope in public life and you could argue everything is a bit rubbish right now, especially for the working classes who are Danny Dyer’s natural constituency.
What’s clear is Danny Dyer might be a hammy onedimensional cockney character actor, but isn’t it time we had more working class presenters like him taking on big topics like this? (Instead of the same old milieu of like-minded progressive ‘tw*ts’?)
Danny Dyer: How to be a man
– on Channel 4 catch-up.