Easily bingeable, indisputably admirable, and criminally underrated, HBO’s Barry is rolling out its third season Sunday nights at 10pm until June 12, and you should be excited. For those unfamiliar with this show, it is most easily defined as a gem of HBO Max, and a marvel of writing and production as far as contemporary television goes. 

Bill Hader writes, directs, and stars in this hilarious tale of an extraordinarily successful hitman who realizes his true purpose lies in the glittering land of Hollywood: his real passion is acting. When sent a hit requesting the murder of a Chechnyan mob boss’ wife’s lover, Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) is accidentally swept onstage as the scene partner to his victim, after following him into his acting class. After receiving a standing ovation for reading words off a page with monotone inflection, the hardened killer decides that this must be where he belongs.

Barry manages a dichotomy between light and dark content-wise, expertly traversing plot points from PTSD to the trivialities of the show business industry. The co-writers Alec Berg and Hader himself conceive a hitman that oozes relatability, to the fullest extent one can relate to a serial killer. The show is genre bending in its methods of weaving punchlines and dark subject matter into parallel sequences, and molding viewers’ tears of laughter into ones of heartfelt sobs in mere moments. It’s hard to put Barry in a box, because the second you think you know where it’s headed, you’re suddenly watching an episode where a hitman is chasing a rabid 11 year old girl through the streets of Los Angeles for hours after having his nose broken by her Taekwondo Olympian father (yes, that is a real episode).

The show is a masterclass in the archetypes of show business, a scene Hader is extremely familiar with as a result of his eight seasons on Saturday Night Live and roles in feature films including Superbad, Hot Rod, and Skeleton Twins. Barry’s acting coach Gene Cousineau (played by Henry Winkler) is a commentary on the washed up failed actors of Los Angeles who give true meaning to the phrase “those who can’t do, teach,” and Barry’s love interest Sally (Sarah Goldberg) portrays the struggling up and comer whose femininity is constantly invalidated, but simultaneously weaponized to rationalize her rejections by talent agents in the industry. This show is telling stories that are often romanticized or ignored altogether in other popular media, but Barry consists of three dimensional characters, who are often not likable, yet you root for in spite of all of their – many – flaws. 

In addition to the fantastic writing that can be found throughout the show, the cinematography also far exceeds the general scale of the shows on TV right now. Bill Hader is a self-proclaimed cinephile, which is made obvious in his directing work on Barry, consisting of very dynamic shots that often take into account negative space in the frame to execute certain emotional ideas effectively. In fact, there are few basic or predictably framed shots in the show; close ups are often shot from unique angles to display certain attitudes of the character or enhance the feelings of the audience, and lighting is utilized as a tactic all its own. Hader directed five of eight episodes in the third season, and based upon his directorial expertise exhibited in the first two seasons, this will be a great asset to the show.