Barry review: Love for the unlikeable hitman

Barry is a show that pulls no punches in depicting an antihero with zero redeeming qualities.

Barry is uncompromising in giving us a man who starts off bad and just gets worse, writes Helen Trinca. Picture: HBO/Foxtel

“Is this a yoke?” the Bolivian mob boss says to the Chechen. “No, this is not a yoke,” is the reply.

Indeed.

We are back with the fourth and final season of the brilliant Barry series that way back at the start in 2018 may have been labelled a “dramedy” but is now absolutely, certainly, no joke.

Which is not to say the Bill Hader/Alec Berg created and produced show is anything less than double-up hilarious at times, just that it’s even darker and deeper and more complex than ever.

The eight-part, half-hour format promises addicts closure but only after a stack of twists and turns in this story of deception, betrayal and the impossibility of redemption for the US veteran-turned hitman-turned-actor-turned-cold-blooded-murderer, Barry Berkman, aka Barry Block.

It’s counter-factual, but we have a lot to thank the disruption of Covid-19 for when it comes to audience satisfaction with the show that has won leading player Hader a swag of Emmy nominations over the past five or six years. That’s because after two seasons (2018, 2019) Barry was on hold as the pandemic made production difficult, if not impossible, for so many shows.

It was 2022 before we saw the third season and re-engaged with a show that pulls no punches in depicting an antihero with zero redeeming qualities.

It’s hard to know whether Hader and Berg would have done it differently without the enforced break, but at the least, the Covid interruption has allowed an extended love affair for fans of this cool, clever piece.

The central premise is not new. How many shows have we seen in the past few years built around a central character with a double life? Think James Gandolfini’s Mafia boss/respectable suburban dad in The Sopranos, an idea which seemed so original when it burst onto TV screens almost 25 years ago. Then there was Bryan Cranston’s turn as Walter White in Breaking Bad (2008-2013), this time with the twist that he didn’t really want to be a baddie; it was just society and the low teacher’s pay that made him morph into a meth producer. More recently, we’ve had Jason Bateman as the beige bloke turned murderous money-launderer in Ozark; and Liev Schreiber’s sustained power over seven seasons of Ray Donovan as the LA fixer who just wants to send his kids to the private schools he missed out on but who quickly descends into a quagmire of killing.

What’s interesting (and morally challenging) about the double-lifers mentioned here, is that it’s near impossible not to like them – or at least to identify with their conflicts.

What’s equally interesting about Barry, is that the show is uncompromising in giving us a man who starts off bad and just gets worse. It resists the impulse to make us like its star – a risky strategy that works thanks to a script that keeps throwing us curveballs and an ensemble of equally compromised characters played by actors delivering pitch-perfect performances.

Barry is the hitman struggling to find real meaning beyond the gun (shades of Tony Soprano?) who happens upon an acting class led by Gene Cousineau, played by the septugenerian Henry Winkler in a performance that shows there really was life after Happy Days (1974-84) for The Fonz. It’s a set-up perfect for drilling into our human capacity for deception, fakery and play-acting.

Henry Winkler’s performance shows there really was life after Happy Days. Picture: HBO/Foxtel

From season one, Hader’s turn as the guy who puts the M into method acting (yes, he can access the shame and guilt of the killer, no problem) is compelling. Hader had a long comic apprenticeship for Barry: eight years on Saturday Night Live, in particular, but the series gives him the chance to demonstrate his acting chops, not to mention his role as its creator, producer, writer and director. At a time when the volume of product demanded by a stack of streaming services means they are struggling to sustain the quality and innovation that made them so revolutionary, talents like Hader are the hope of the side.

There’s much to love in this new season with Barry in jail for murder alongside his longtime mentor/handler Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root) who dallies with the idea of the ultimate betrayal.

Meanwhile the Bolivian (Michael Irby as Cristobal Sifuentes) and the Chechen (Anthony Carrigan as NoHo Hank) now united in the sand delivery business, talk podcasts with a hitman; and deliver a corporate-style motivational talk to a bunch of drug lords. Barry’s long-time love interest Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg) almost collapses as she learns he has been arrested for murder. She is wracked with dismay and horror, but is she acting or what? Her cynical journey from merely ambitious in season one (remember how she insists on playing Macbeth, not Lady Macbeth, in a scene worthy of a minor thesis, it’s so packed with allusions) to morally corrupt is complete as she tries to figure out how her career can be bolstered not destroyed by her connection with the criminal Barry.

She visits him in jail and tells him amid tears: “I feel safe with you”. Really? By this time we’re alive to the script’s tricks and to the impossibility of trusting any of these dudes. Ditto with the flashbacks as Barry reviews his childhood. For a moment, we believe we’re in search of some explanation for his adult behaviour, yet we know it won’t be forthcoming.

This is tough territory: Barry fantasises about his childhood meeting with Fuches and for a second we see the handler as a father figure. Quickly we switch to prisoners trying to watch television but interrupted by a monologue delivered by Fuches, just like the monologues delivered by those acting students in season one. All the world’s a stage, right? In the background, the television continues. It’s Yellowstone, a scene where patriarch Kevin Costner holds his grandson in the saddle as he rides across his ranch – the fantasy father figure of American myth, the mentor and protector in shocking contrast to Fuches.

No sentimentality for this lot, and definitely no redemption. In one scene, a sympathetic cop tries to reassure Barry that “each of us is more than the worst thing we have done”. Barry opens up and tells him: “I’m a cop killer….” The cop, slowly recognising he has been had, reaches for his truncheon. Fade out and back to Barry; left alone, covered in blood on the floor.

Like I said, uncompromising.

Season four of Barry begins with a double episode special streaming on FOX Showcase, Monday, 9.30pm (and available On Demand on FOXTEL)