Britain’s top geezer tackles the ‘war’ on masculinity

Danny Dyer: How to Be a Man

Channel 4 ★★★★★

Benji Wilson

Part of Danny Dyer’s appeal is that you can’t quite take him seriously. He doesn’t quite take himself seriously – there’s often a twinkle in his eye when he doles out the requisite “geezer” sound bite – and programme-makers love the irony. Hence the early scene in this two-part documentary where Dyer showed us his beloved man cave… and the door handle fell off. He’s always one small step away from being the butt of a joke.

It’s both the making of How to Be a Man and its main weakness. The two episodes see Dyer exploring modern masculinity from schools to men’s refuges to boxing clubs to building sites. By now, we know the principal problem – it’s the fact that young boys think there’s anything to be said for influencer Andrew Tate and his cockeyed definition of what men should and shouldn’t be. What’s undeniable is that Tate’s bid for attention has worked: Dyer’s own son, who is nine years old, thinks that Tate is a “total G”.

That was just one of the ways in which Dyer was the right man for this job. Over two hours, he outlined several others – he comes from a working-class family where men were meant to be protectors and providers; his father upped and left when he was nine, and their relationship up until that point is defined by the moment when Dyer’s father told him they should no longer hold hands. (Dyer remembers it vividly; he is 45.) In addition, his working life was initially defined by a series of tough-guy roles and the type of proper-geezer persona that many men use to conceal and repress emotional problems.

And men have a lot of emotional problems: the sheer number of suicides is a large part of the story here. Dyer tries, in his own chaotic way, to find out why, and though his conclusions are hardly earth-shattering, the questions he’s asking are vital. There were interviews, including one with a man whose abusive partner ended up murdering their child, that were immensely powerful.

These are serious issues, and that brings us back to how seriously you can take Dyer. I came away from How to Be a Man impressed. No, the scenes in which he dressed up in a floral boiler suit to illustrate the importance of self-expression were probably not necessary. But when Danny was dumped in a room with men of every stripe, he got them talking. That, as he recognised, is always the first step.

Both episodes of ‘Danny Dyer: How to Be a Man’ are available on Channel4.com now

Canvassing opinion: Dyer got men to open up and reveal their emotions