Review – Bill Hader and Alec Berg have created a truly endearing antihero with HBO’s ‘Barry’

Everyone seems to like the new comedic series Barry, presumably in part because everyone – myself included – likes Barry, the titular character. Veteran comedic writer Alec Berg (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm) and actor Bill Hader (SNL, The Mindy Project) have created a truly endearing antihero. Barry, a depressed hit man, moves from situation to situation in a sort of trance; he has the languid movements and delayed reaction time of someone suffering from severe long-term depression, or from PTSD. Barry has both. He talks very little about his (very large) problems – which is already funny, because most people do the opposite.

The first episode, “Make Your Mark,” really just sets the scene: Barry served in Afghanistan and hasn’t been the same since, Barry became a hit man, Barry goes to Los Angeles and sees a close-knit group of theatre people do some fairly awful acting for each other to great applause … and Barry decides to become an actor. It’s all fast and funny enough that you almost forget it’s a pilot. In the second episode, “Use It” – these episode names are chapter titles from the acting treatise written by Barry’s new theatre instructor, Gene Cosineau (Henry Winkler) – Barry is trying, and mostly failing, to quit the murder business in favour of show business. Hilarity ensues as Barry attempts to simultaneously avoid the law, placate Chechen mobsters, and pursue his new crush (Sarah Goldberg). Oh, and learn the art of acting of course.

Both episodes of Barry are laugh-out-loud funny. Comedic high points include a casually devastating Gary Oldman/True Romance spoof, in the form of a very poorly done “scene” in Cosineau’s class (it’s an LA theatre group, so all the scenes are from movies). Winkler is hilarious as the emotionally volatile teacher: “I wish I could say that this was the first time that one of my students was gunned down in the street, but it’s not. And as much as it pains me to say it, it is most likely not the last.” But the best line comes from Fuches (Stephen Root), Barry’s manager and family friend: “Hitler painted! John Wayne Gacy painted! It’s a good, solid hobby. It never got in the way of what they were doing.”

So far, I know what I’ll be doing: watching Barry.

Barry airs Sunday nights at 10:30 pm on HBO.