May will be a brutal month for fans of great television. Succession hangs up its necktie on 28 May at the end of its fourth season, bringing an end to the best drama of the last decade or so. The same night, on the same channel (HBO in the US; Sky and NOW in the UK), Barry will also finish up its own stellar four-season run. Bill Hader’s showbiz satire/crime drama fusion has never quite hit the zeitgeist like its HBO compatriot, but those who did tune in have been transfixed by its inventive, blackly comic sensibility and first-rate performances. Season four, thankfully, sees it go out on a high.
The series picks back up with assassin-turned-actor Barry Berkman (Hader) at a low point, locked up in prison for the murder of police officer Janice Moss. Having been turned in by his former acting coach, the conceited Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), Barry is a man unravelling at the seams. Joining him in prison is Fuches (Stephen Root), another eccentric father figure from his past. Outside prison, the other characters have to contend with his absence. They include Chechen mobster NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), now living in domestic bliss with former rival Cristobal (Michael Irby), and Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg), Barry’s ex-girlfriend, whose meltdown at the end of last season, coupled with her ties to an accused killer, has abruptly tanked a promising career in TV.
To say much more about what actually happens in these new episodes of Barry would be giving it away; part of the thrill of the series is the sheer unpredictability of its storylines. Suffice it to say that the show does not morph into a gritty prison drama, nor does it waste much energy on Barry’s impending legal battle. In the world that Hader and co have created, the universe is governed by the twin forces of ineptitude and pure dumb luck.
As well as starring in and creating the series, Hader directs every episode of this final stretch. There’s a confidence and slickness to the show’s framing and editing; the rhythms of the dialogue evince the kind of comic assuredness that made Hader such a popular mainstay of Saturday Night Live. As with previous years, however, it is the direction of the cast that is perhaps most impressive. Winkler, Root and Carrigan are all fantastic, and Goldberg – whose character takes a pretty massive journey over the course of eight episodes – is a revelation. Hader, meanwhile, turns in his finest work to date, making Barry’s almost childlike derangement utterly compelling to behold.
As Barry ricochets towards its endpoint, it burns through storylines with an admirable boldness. An obvious antecedent would be the final season of Breaking Bad, another double-life crime drama that firmly rejected the idea of a “status quo”. But Barry is its own thing – tonally singular and perennially surprising. It will be missed.
