HBO
There are many good things to say about Barry, Bill Hader’s new half-hour show for HBO, and perhaps the best of them is this: It’s not really like anything else on TV. Barry combines pitch-black comedy with an even darker drama about a hit man trying to make a clean break from his past.
And while that premise—man unravels as he reckons with the violence he’s caused—is familiar, Hader and his team of writers and directors (including Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Alec Berg, Atlanta’s Hiro Murai, and stand-up comedian Emily Heller) have tapped into a subtly funny vein of melancholy. The result is something promising and challenging.